One of the many odd features of American politics, circa 2018, is that the primary beneficiaries of our nation’s social safety net are also the core supporters of the party that wants to slash it. No age group derives a bigger benefit from our welfare state than America’s elderly; but no cohort is as susceptible to the cultural paranoia and racial resentment that sustain the modern right, either. Thus, conservatives can’t shrink “big government” without retaining the allegiance of the voters who stand to lose most from the erosion of social insurance.
The tensions inherent to this arrangement grew conspicuous during last year’s fight over Obamacare repeal — when congressional Republicans tried to pass a health-care bill that would have drastically increased the cost of health insurance for older, working-class voters in rural America (a core GOP constituency) while dramatically lowering premiums for 20-something city-dwellers (an overwhelmingly Democratic demographic). Many purple-district Republicans voted for the bill, anyway, effectively betting that it was more politically hazardous to thwart the ideological goals of their big-dollar donors, than to betray the material interests of their gray-haired voters.
This may have been costly mistake.
According to polling from Reuters/Ipsos, the percentage of college-educated white voters who say “health care” is their top issue rose from 8 percent in 2016 to 21 percent today; over that same period, the demographic went from favoring a Republican Congress by ten points, to backing a Democratic one by two.
Of course, this shift isn’t solely the product of health-care politics. While older whites with college diplomas have swung left by 12 points since 2016, those without bachelor’s degrees have remained solidly in the GOP’s camp.
If material self-interest were the only force pushing older whites out of the Republican tent, one might expect “working class” elderly whites to be leading the exodus. Nevertheless, the Ryan agenda does seem to have played a role in alienating college-educated white Republicans, whose educational backgrounds already rendered them a less-than-ideal audience for Trump’s anti-intellectual shtick. As Reuters reports:
John Camm has been a Republican since the Nixon Administration, but the 63-year-old Tucson accountant says he will likely support a Democrat for Congress in November. He is splitting with his party over access to health insurance as well as its recent overhaul of the nation’s income tax system. He also supports gun control measures that the party has rejected.
“I’m a moderate Republican, and yet my party has run away from that,” Camm said. “So give me a moderate Democrat.”
… Voters between the ages of 60 and 65 are particularly worried about healthcare, said Brigid Harrison, a political scientist at Montclair State University in New Jersey, because they are paying ever higher private health insurance premiums and are not yet eligible for Medicare.
Polling on this fall’s elections have consistently demonstrated that the Democratic base is more energized than the Republican one. In the face of this grim data, Republicans have sought consolation in the fact that core Democratic constituencies (like nonwhite and younger voters) have historically failed to turn out for midterms in high numbers.
But the Democrats’ turnout advantage in the past year’s special elections put a dent in that hope — and the leftward lurch of elderly whites all but eviscerates it. Older, college-educated whites are among the most reliable voters in the nation. And in many of this fall’s most competitive districts, such voters account for nearly 10 percent of the population, according to Reuters’ analysis. Republicans were already at risk of losing the House due to shifts in turnout patterns, alone — but if those shifts are accompanied by significant defections among reliable GOP constituencies, the party could suffer historic losses up and down the ballot.
“The real core for the Republicans is white, older white, and if they’re losing ground there, they’re going to have a tsunami,” political scientist Larry Sabato told Reuters. “If that continues to November, they’re toast.”
Remarkably, even as Republicans have lost ground with this key demographic — and Democratic candidates have won improbable special election victories while painting their Republican opponents as enemies of Medicare and Social Security — Paul Ryan has persisted in calling for sweeping cuts to entitlement spending. Meanwhile, House Republicans are preparing a symbolic vote on a “balanced budget” amendment — a gesture meant to appease die-hard fiscal conservatives, but that seems just as likely to help Democrats put a spotlight on the potential costs of the Trump tax cuts to ordinary Americans, not least those who are relying on Uncle Sam’s largesse to get them through their golden years.
WHY NOT REPLACE CONTRACTORS WITH UBER & LYFT DRIVERS?
METRO ACCESS GROWING PROBLEMS INCLUDE.......
POLITICALLY-RIGGED CONTRACTS,
POOR MANAGEMENT,
HORRIBLE PERFORMANCE LEVELS,
SEVERE RETALIATION AGAINST WHISTLE BLOWERS,
EXTREME DISORGANIZATION,
RARE ON-TIME PICK-UPS, DISABLED PASSENGERS FORCED TO RIDE FOR HOURS,
NEPOTISM,
DISPATCHERS DON'T KNOW WHERE DRIVERS ARE,
POWER STRUGGLES, SEXUAL HARASSMENT,
HOTBED FOR SINGLE WOMEN LOOKING FOR SUGAR DADDIES IN THE WORKPLACE.
Users of Metro’s service for the elderly and people with disabilities say they have recently endured hours-long waits for rides, spent entire afternoons in vans traveling nonsensical routes and watched as fellow riders soiled themselves on unreasonably long trips.
The routes that MetroAccess drivers must follow are not only unnecessarily long, but sometimes also take them in the opposite directions from their destinations, say customers, including some who are blind, medically fragile or use wheelchairs. One former customer said her doctor recommended she stop using the service to get to her lung cancer treatments because it was too stressful.
For MetroAccess’s 43,000 registered customers, the problems began last September with a sudden, seven-point drop in on-time performance. The share of excessively late trips nearly tripled from the month before. Metro officials have blamed soaring numbers of late and missed trips on a driver shortage.
“I feel like because I have a disability, I’m being treated like less than everyone else,” said Shannon Minnick, 46, who is quadriplegic and uses a wheelchair.
Minnick, of Silver Spring, said she recently missed a doctor’s appointment after spending more than 2½ hours in a MetroAccess van for what is typically a 25-minute ride. On another recent trip, a driver taking her home from Rockville first picked up someone in Kensington, five minutes from her home, and then drove another passenger to north Silver Spring before heading south again to drop her off.
Nancy Childress, 63, of West Springfield, Va., recalled how one MetroAccess trip took so long this winter that another passenger soiled herself after being in the van for two to three hours.
“She couldn’t help it,” said Childress, who has trouble walking and balancing from being hit by a car two decades ago.
The driver disinfected the van, and they went on their way, Childress said.
Heidi Case, a disability advocate, said she knew a woman who almost called the police, frantic that she hadn’t heard from her severely disabled daughter who had been stuck in a van for more than two hours.
Those are the kinds of “disastrous things that are happening,” Case said. “It is a significant quality-of-life change.”
On-time performance remains near its lowest level since at least mid-2013. In April, 88 percent of customers were picked up on time — better than the 83 percent in the fall but still below Metro’s minimum target of 92 percent.
By April, the number of trips deemed “excessively late” — more than 20 minutes past the half-hour pickup window — had nearly doubled since last summer, from about 2,400 a month to 4,700. Incidents in which the driver never showed also doubled to almost 1,500 in April.
The number of botched and excessively late trips make up a relatively small portion — about 3 to 4 percent — of MetroAccess’s overall service. But with about 8,000 trips a day, the percentages mask thousands of missed appointments, late arrivals at work and frustrated customers who rely on the service to live independently.
While high driver turnover has been a problem in the paratransit industry for decades, Metro officials say the growth in services such as Uber and Lyft has further cut into the driver pool. The shortage worsened just as ridership was picking up from the summer lull, Metro officials said, even though the agency’s own data shows usage actually dropped by 9,500 passengers between August and October.
Christian Kent, Metro’s assistant general manager for access services, said contractors were down about 100 drivers in September, leaving the companies 10 percent short of the 1,000 needed for full service. As the driver shortage increased throughout the fall, Kent said, on-time performance couldn’t recover, even in months when ridership dropped.
“The contractors experienced a more competitive driver market than they have had to deal with in the past, and the number of people who applied for jobs with MetroAccess was lower than we’ve seen in the past,” Kent said.
Transit agencies are required to provide paratransit service under the Americans With Disabilities Act, and MetroAccess is the fifth-largest such program in the country. Usage has more than doubled in the past 14 years, from just under a million trips in 2003 to more than 2 million trips. It is the agency’s fastest-growing and most expensive service.
Metro spends about $100 million annually to provide Metro¬Access service via five contractors. The transit agency subsidizes 92 percent of the costs, with the rest covered by fare revenue.
Rides cost two times the equivalent bus or rail fare, with a maximum $6.50, for a trip that costs the agency an average of $50.
Customers must make a reservation a day in advance and are given a 30-minute pickup window. As a ride-sharing service, there are typically multiple passengers per van.
Many of those who rely on MetroAccess cannot easily navigate Metro or afford taxis or ride-hailing services.
Kent said a trip is considered late if it is even one minute outside the 30-minute pickup window.
Just because on-time performance dropped, he said, that doesn’t mean “that suddenly every trip is egregiously late.”
Contributing to the problem are the computer-generated routes that drivers are required to follow — even if they don’t make sense in terms of geography or time.
Documents obtained through a public records request show that MetroAccess contractors began “dropping” routes at a precipitous clip last August, meaning the companies didn’t have enough drivers to accept all the trips that the computer assigned them.
During some months last fall, as many as 1,337 trips had to be reassigned among available drivers.
Fewer drivers means those on hand must cover larger areas and have more trips tacked on to their routes, Kent said. Accommodating these “add-on” trips causes the circuitous routes that customers have complained about.
Steve Polkinghorn, of Burke, Va., said his commute home from his job in Arlington County used to rarely exceed 90 minutes. Now it can take more than two hours. That’s because the drivers who pick him up at his Crystal City office often head into the District to pick up another passenger before turning around and slogging through traffic back to Northern Virginia to take him home.
“Why am I driving due north when I live due south?” said Polkinghorn, who has multiple sclerosis.
Cindy LaBon, who is blind, said out-of-the-way routes have left her and her guide dog stuck in a van up to three hours.
In the fall, LaBon said, a fellow passenger who was mentally disabled began crying after the driver passed her street to drop off someone else miles way. The woman had already been in the van for three hours on a trip from Lanham to Silver Spring.
Two weeks ago, LaBon said, she spent more than two hours trying to get from Burtonsville to Gaithersburg — both in Montgomery County — in a van that first took her to Northwest Washington.
“They don’t know geography,” LaBon, 68, said of whoever sets the drivers’ routes. “They don’t even put trips [together] going in the same direction.”
While the computer suggests three options, staff members in the scheduling center can override the software, Kent said.
“On days when we have surging ridership and depleted drivers to route, sometimes the dispatchers don’t have an ideal choice coming out of the computer,” Kent said. “We are very much aware of the issue.”
Metro has fined the three companies that provide drivers — Transdev, First Transit and Diamond Transportation — almost $1 million each in contract “damages” since the fall.
But Metro officials say they’ve also cut the companies a financial break to help them hire more drivers. The agency has greatly reduced future financial penalties, in some cases by 90 percent, for six months, according to Metro. Transdev also has been allowed to use temporary drivers, a Metro spokeswoman said. And the agency recently agreed to pay the contractors “slightly” more so they could raise wages.
“It’s very difficult for them to put out the extra cash to pay drivers at a higher wage scale if, simultaneously, we’re taking the money back from them in damages,” Kent said.
Transdev, the company responsible for half of MetroAccess rides, blamed the sudden downturn on the difficulty of recruiting drivers, “given the current robust labor force and low unemployment rate.” The company said it had been fully staffed a year before the performance drop, but suddenly attrition rose and driver training classes shrank. Meanwhile, ridership increased in the fall just as back-to-school-and-work traffic jumped.
First Transit, which is responsible for 35 percent of Metro¬Access trips, said it faces the same problems attracting drivers. By fall, the company was short 35 to 50 drivers, spokesman Jay Brock said last month, and the workforce hadn’t fully recovered. Brock said the company is participating in job fairs, increasing its marketing and undertaking grass-roots efforts to attract new hires.
“We’re screening, interviewing, taking [applicants] through our background checks and trying to get them on the road and behind the wheel,” Brock said.
John Gray, acting project manager at MV Transportation, which manages the MetroAccess call center, directed reporters’ questions to Metro.
Kate Walden, a spokeswoman for Diamond Transportation, which provides 15 percent of MetroAccess trips, said driver shortages are occurring nationwide. She said the company is now “nearly fully staffed” for MetroAccess and is “aggressively recruiting to ensure we have a full complement of drivers this summer.”
A union representing paratransit drivers says Metro is letting contractors off the hook for poor service. A key problem, they say, remains the “poverty wages” drivers receive. The companies recently agreed to increase wages to at least $15 an hour, union officials said. For example, Transdev drivers who were making $13.85 an hour saw their wages increased to $16 an hour.
“You cannot operate a public service with a sweatshop employment model,” said Todd Brogan, a union organizer with Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1764 at a recent demonstration urging Metro to stop using contractors for paratransit.
[Transit service for elderly, people with disabilities sees sharp decline]
Kent said training classes are now full and efforts continue to hire more drivers to meet the growing demand. The agency said late Friday that they were fully staffed. Metro also recently began receiving 207 new vans to replace older ones and expand the fleet by 25 vehicles.
The five-year MetroAccess contract expires in June 2018, and the agency is putting the new one out for bid. The agency also is exploring ways to partner with Uber, Lyft and other transportation services to provide same-day paratransit service at a fraction of the cost.
Kent said MetroAccess will improve, even as the number of people needing it continues to grow.
“There’s really not a choice,” Kent said. “MetroAccess is our responsibility to our customers with disabilities. We must provide it under the ADA, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.
Generally speaking, election tacticians for both major parties pursue two strategies: make sure your supporters actually go to the polls on Election Day and try to persuade undecided voters to lean your way when they cast their ballots.
But this year, Republicans have aggressively added a new tactic…limiting the number of Democrats who are able to vote.
They have done this by passing state laws requiring voters to present ID, often with photos, on the assumption that voters who are too old or too poor to have photo IDs are more likely to vote Democratic.
For example, new laws requiring voters in Pennsylvania and Mississippi to show ID at polling places could result in thousands not voting in November.
State elections officials in Pennsylvania say more than three quarters of a million registered voters do not have the most common required documentation: a drivers license or ID card from the state Transportation Department.
In Philadelphia alone, more than 186,000 registered voters (18% of the city’s total registration) lack a license or state ID.
Many of these voters could be turned away in November unless they can provide the above forms of identification or a U.S. passport, student ID card, current military identification or ID cards issued to government employees.
The percentage of registered voters statewide at risk of not being allowed to vote is 9.2%, out of 8.2 million people.
The administration of Governor Tom Corbett had previously claimed that only 1% of registered voters did not have the required photo ID.
The new law was adopted by Republican lawmakers and Corbett over the objections of Democrats who argued that the restriction would disenfranchise thousands of voters, especially the poor, elderly and young.
A similar conundrum faces voters in Mississippi, where the voter ID law has a Catch-22 aspect.
Those who need to obtain an ID to qualify to vote must show a certified birth certificate, but for those who don’t have a birth certificate, they need to show an ID to get one.
Besides Pennsylvania and Mississippi, five other states have passed strict photo ID laws…Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Tennessee and Wisconsin, although Wisconsin’s law is being challenged in the courts.
Texas and South Carolina have also passed such laws, but they are being challenged by the federal government.
In Virginia, a law enacted in May requires those who show up without ID to cast a provisional ballot and then present ID within a few days for their ballots to count.
Viviette Applewhite, 93, of Philadelphia has become the face of a civil liberties lawsuit against the state of Pennsylvania for requiring voters to show identification before voting. The new requirement was signed into law by Republican Governor Tom Corbett on March 14.
The wheelchair-bound Applewhite says she has voted since 1960, but won’t be able to do so this November because of the new legal requirement. She doesn’t possess a driver’s license and is unable to obtain a birth certificate from the state, she says, making it impossible for her to show the requisite ID at the polls.
Another 93-year-old plaintiff, Bea Bookler, first voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940. She has the documents needed to obtain a valid photo ID, but state law requires that she present them in person and she is too frail to do so.
Representing Applewhite, Bookler and eight other plaintiffs are the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Color People. They contend the law will disenfranchise tens of thousands of eligible Pennsylvanians who lack ID.
A 2006 survey by the Brennan Center for Justice concluded that about 13 million adult American citizens lack the kind of proof needed to comply with voter ID laws.
Highways buckled in Illinois and Wisconsin, water use was cut back in Indiana and those who had power in the mid-Atlantic were urged to conserve it, but the heat gripping much of the country was only expected to worsen Saturday.
Temperatures of more than 100 degrees were forecast in Philadelphia, authorities warned of excessive heat in the Midwest and the power outages surpassed a week in the mid-Atlantic, where extreme heat was expected into the weekend.
A major storm in the area last week left behind damage, which combined with the high demand for power to stress the electrical system's capabilities, a Washington-area utility said.
Hundreds of thousands remained without power Friday night in the Appalachians and mid-Atlantic, mostly in West Virginia.
Tens of thousands were still without power in the Midwest as well after storms there this week. Utilities hoped to restore service over the weekend in Michigan, where temperatures were forecast in the 90s.
The heat was blamed for at least 23 deaths.
Nine people in Maryland have died of heat-related causes in recent days, the state said. Authorities in Chicago said heat was a factor in six deaths there, mostly among older people.
Three deaths in Wisconsin and two in Tennessee were also reported to be heat-related.
In Ohio, a man in his 70s and two women -- one in her late 60s, the other in her 80s -- were found dead this week, said Dr. Jeff Lee, a deputy county coroner in the central part of the state.
He said all three were suffering from heart disease but died from stress caused by high temperatures in their houses.
Temperatures inside were stifling, recorded in the 90s in two cases, with windows shut and no ventilation. The houses lacked electricity because of recent power outages.
"If they had gotten cooling, we would have expected them to survive," he said.
Record temperatures were set Friday in the Indiana cities of Indianapolis, South Bend and Fort Wayne, where temperatures could reach 106 degrees but feel more like 114.
In central Arkansas, Russellville reached 106 degrees, breaking a record set in 1964.
Relief was on the way in the form of a cold front as the weekend ends, but forecasters expected it to bring severe weather, too.
The rain should help dry spells in many places.
Much of Arkansas is enduring brown grass and seeing trees lose their green, and farmers in Ohio are growing concerned about the dry conditions, considered among the worst of the past decade.
That’s how Carolyn Farmer, 47, of Charlotte, describes what it has been like sleeping without air conditioning in recent weeks, as temperatures bounced between 90 and 100.
“It’s so hot, the mattress sticks to you,” Farmer said.
“I have a fan, but it just blows the hot air. You don’t sleep. You just stay up all night drinking water so you don’t dehydrate.”
On Friday – when the temperature hit 97 – Farmer was first in line as Crisis Assistance Ministry’s Free Furniture Bank began giving out nearly 1,000 air conditioners donated by Charlotte-based Electrolux.
It was one example of how charities and businesses are reaching out to help vulnerable people stay cool in this dangerously hot stretch of summer.
The heat wave is expected to continue with temperatures at or near 100 degrees Saturday and Sunday. The heat index likely will approach 105 degrees daily along and southeast of Interstate 85, forecasters say.
Electrolux officials said their gift comes in direct response to the heat.
Mayaanne Mays, 42, was among those who came for a free air conditioner. She has epilepsy and said she has been without air conditioning for more than a year. As the heat has worsened, so have her seizures, she said.
Mays didn’t have transportation and intended to carry the 45-pound appliance home on her lap via a city bus.
An Electrolux employee offered to give her a ride instead, and she accepted.
“This is going to change my life,” Mays said. “It’s 95 degrees in my house in the middle of the night. I have spent a lot of time at neighbors’ houses, just to stay cool.”
Antoinette Davis, who is also disabled, said she has been without air conditioning all year and has taken to occasionally sticking her head in the refrigerator, just to breathe the cool air.
The 48-year-old said the heat has made her dizzy at times and even blurred her vision.
“I would go to a park and sit under a tree, because it was actually cooler than my house,” she said.
The heat has also prompted the Red Cross to open a cooling station for the second weekend in a row at uptown’s Hal Marshal Annex, and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Senior Centers has issued a plea for donated fans after exhausting its supply of 700 in a record four weeks.
Crisis Assistance Ministry is also seeing an increase in people needing help paying utility bills, including those who lived through the spring without electricity, but now find the heat unbearable.
Tovi Lynn Martin of Crisis Assistance likens it to “camping out in your house.” The agency sees an average of 200 people a day.
“With no power and no water, there comes a point when people are jeopardizing their health,” Martin said.
Red Cross officials said it’s the same concern that prompted the opening of a cooling center at 618 N. College St. this weekend. The center attracted 80 to 150 people last weekend, including the elderly, disabled and homeless.
“When temperatures get in the triple digits, it’s necessary for people to get out of the heat and some simply have no place else to go,” said Kate Meier of the Red Cross.
The Crisis Assistance Free Furniture Bank provides donated furniture to low-income families via referrals. Carol Hardison, executive director of Crisis Assistance, noted appliances are in short supply, making the Electrolux gift much needed.
Caryn Klebba of Electrolux said the giveaway, valued at $140,000, marks a first for the company, which has about 700 employees in Charlotte.
Klebba said the company contacted Crisis Assistance because the agency has the capability of screening recipients quickly.
Carolyn Farmer said she didn’t believe it at first when she heard of the offer.
“I’m going to cook my first meal in a long time tonight, thanks to God and Electrolux,” she said. “It’s been too hot to cook, and I’ve been eating cold cuts too long.”
The Obama administration proposed regulations on Thursday to give the nation’s nearly two million home care workers minimum wage and overtime protections. Those workers have long been exempted from coverage.
Labor unions and advocates for low-wage workers have pushed for the changes, contending that the 37-year-old exemption improperly swept these workers, who care for many elderly and disabled Americans, into the same “companion” category as baby sitters. The administration’s move calls for home care aides to be protected under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the nation’s main wage and hour law.
“They work hard and play by the rules,” President Obama said about a group of workers who often feed patients, tend wounds or help with physical therapy. “Today’s action will ensure that these men and women get paid fairly for a service that a growing number of older Americans couldn’t live without.”
These workers, according to industry figures, generally earn $8.50 to $12 an hour, compared with the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The White House said 92 percent of these workers were women, nearly 30 percent were African-American and 12 percent Hispanic. Nearly 40 percent rely on public benefits like Medicaid and food stamps.
While industry experts say an overwhelming majority are paid at least the minimum wage, many do not receive a time-and-a-half premium when they work more than 40 hours a week. Twenty-two states do not include home health care workers under their wage and hour laws.
“The job they do is a real job and they deserve the same basic rights as any other workers,” said Steven Edelstein, national policy director of PHI PolicyWorks, a nonprofit group that seeks to improve conditions for home care workers. “This industry has one of the nation’s fastest-growing work forces, and the challenge is to make these better jobs if we’re trying to attract good people to come and provide the services.”
According to the federal government, six million of the 40 million Americans older than 65 now need some form of daily assistance to live outside a nursing home. That number, government officials say, is expected to double to 12 million by 2030. Republican lawmakers and business groups criticized the proposed rules, which might be modified after a 60-day public comment period. Industry officials said the proposals would push up costs and might cause home care agencies to reduce the hours of aides who work more than 40 hours a week and instead hire more aides.
“The president’s goal is commendable, but the likely result of this new rule is reduced hours for home care workers and higher costs for taxpayers,” said John Kline, a Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the House Education and the Work Force Committee, and Tim Walberg, a Minnesota Republican who heads the panel’s subcommittee on work force protections. “Moreover, our nation’s elderly may pay the greatest price in the form of more costly services and fewer opportunities to obtain the care they need in the comfort of their own homes.”
William A. Dombi, vice president for law at the National Association of Home Care and Hospice, said workers might not receive much overtime pay as a result of these changes. “These new rules might come out with everybody behind,” he said. “Workers might not get the hours they want and agencies might have higher administrative and recruiting costs.”
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said any increased costs would be modest. She said it was hard to project exactly what employers would do, whether they would have many employees continue to work overtime or would hire additional workers to minimize overtime. She estimated that Medicare or Medicaid, which cover 75 percent of the nation’s home care costs, would pay $31.1 million to $169.5 million more each year toward home care aides, which she said would represent 0.06 percent to 0.29 percent of federal and state outlays for home care.
Secretary Solis said the proposal would ”level the playing field for staffing agencies, who will no longer be pressured to underpay their competitors on wages to gain an edge.”
Noting that nearly 90 percent of the nation’s home care aides work for agencies, Labor Department officials said such aides would receive the new wage and hour protections. The department said some companions employed by individuals for activities like helping them take walks or engage in hobbies would still be exempt from minimum wage and overtime coverage.
In 1974, the Labor Department exempted “companionship” workers from coverage under the Fair Labor Standards Act, a move that focused on baby sitters at a time when the home care industry was in its infancy.
In 2007, the Supreme Court issued a decision involving a New York home care aide, Evelyn Coke, who often worked 70 hours a week, ruling that she was not entitled to overtime pay under existing regulations.
The court said it was up to Congress or the Labor Department to change the rules.
ATTENTION CHARLOTTE AREA HOMELESS CITIZENS, SENIOR CITIZENS & LOW INCOME CITIZENS! THERE WILL BE COOLING CENTERS OPEN TODAY IN THIS REGION! THANK GOD!
This Morning Local Media Stations are reporting that today in Charlotte, NC there will be Cooling Stations Open in Uptown Charlotte at the Hal Marshall Building for People with NO Access to Central Air or Air Conditioners.
Who do you think is Responsible for News about Cooling Centers being Open in Charlotte? The Mayor! An Elected Official!
The Mayor's Office is Responsible for Communicating to the Public about Cooling Centers being available & Open to help provide Relief for Homeless People, Senior Citizens & Low Income People.
Its funny how whenever there is any news about the upcoming 2012 DNC Convention, that information is quickly reported by the Local Media & Local Newspapers. So why not Broadcast information about Open Cooling Centers in this region too?
I Don't Apologize for anything because I sincerely Care about regular, everyday People, NOT rubbing elbows with Politicians!
Duke Energy Company the Greedy, Electricity Monopoly for North Carolina, is cutting off Electricity for people who in Low Income Communities and for people who often use Air Conditioners, just to Conserve Energy for Wealthier Citizens who reside in Wealthy Charlotte Communities.
North Carolina did NOT experience any Inclement Weather (Storms) until Sunday Evening, so why did Duke Energy cut off the Power of many Low Income & Middle Class Customers on Friday and Saturday during an Extremely Dangerous Heat Wave?
Low Income Customers who use Air Conditioners or lack Access to Central Air. For example: Low Income Senior Citizens.
So.....
Why did Duke Energy cut off Energy to 6,000+ Customers, mostly Low Income BLACK Customers this weekend during one of the Worst Heat Waves in History?
They did it to Conserve Energy for Wealthy Customers, mainly Wealthy WHITE Customers.
That's Right!
Duke Energy Company did it to help Conserve Energy for Wealthy WHITE Customers who don't want to Pay High Utility Bills.
Its okay for Low Income & Middle Class Citizens (mainly BLACK Citizens) to pay Higher Utility Bills, but NOT North Carolina's Wealthy WHITE Citizens.
This is Nothing New about North Carolina!
Such Racist Practices have been in force the entire 20+ Years that I've lived here.
Duke Energy prefers to use Coal because its a Huge Money Maker and is Angry at the Obama Administration over its New EPA Standards recently upheld by a Federal Appeals Court.
Yes! Duke Energy Officials Will quickly smile in Pres. Obama's Face but behind his back they are Extremely Angry over the Enforcement of his EPA's Administration's Carbon Emission Reduction Standards to improve the Quality of Air.
And in case you are wondering if those Low Income Citizens pay lower Energy bills than the Wealthier citizens in North Carolina you are sadly Mistaken & WRONG!
To the Contrary it is the Low Income Citizens who are often charged Higher Energy Bills than the Wealthier Citizens in North Carolina.
Wealthier citizens can have every Appliance, Gadget & Heated Swimming Pools in their Homes while only being barely charged $100. a Month by Duke Energy, if that much.
On the other hand Low Income BLACK, North Carolina will simply own an Air Conditioner and a Washing Machine while being charged almost $200. EACH Month by Duke Energy.
Please don't tell me this is due to Wealthier Citizens living in Energy-Efficient Homes or having Energy-Efficient Appliances because its NOT!
Instead its due to North Carolina Still being a Klan-Ruled, Segregated State in the 21st Century!
The same thing happens with North Carolina's Piedmont Natural Gas Company and the Water Supply Companies.
ALL of North Carolina's Utility Companies frequently Charge Low Income & Middle Class, BLACK Citizens much Higher Utility Bills than they Charge Wealthy WHITE, North Carolina Citizens.
Excuse me but isn't that considered Discrimination?
Considering how Duke Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas Company and Charlotte Water Dept ALL receive Annual Federal Subsidies, isn't it ILLEGAL to Practice Discrimination against some Customers based on RACE????
This is why I'm NOT Biting my tongue about what REALLY goes on in the City of Charlotte or the State of North Carolina.
Some BLACK Charlotte Residents want to PRETEND that life is GREAT for BLACK People or GREAT for Low Income Citizens when its NOT!
Charlotte & the Entire State of North Carolina is still primarily a Klan-Ruled State and a Segregated, Klan-Ruled City.
BLACK and Low Income Citizens are frequently Mistreated & Thrown Under The Bus even by BLACK Politicians because those BLACK Politicians are Afraid to Change the Current, Racially Segregated, Unfair Institutional System.
During Election time BLACK Politicians often come knocking on BLACK Voters' doors with promises of FREE Fried Chicken, than after those Voters re-elect them those Same Selfish, BLACK Politicians throw their BLACK Constituents under the Bus to Appease North Carolina's WHITE Power Structure Officials.
What a Shame!!!
I Refuse paint a Rosy picture about life in Charlotte or life in the State of North Carolina when BLACKS & Latinos are still being treated as we were in the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s.
Thus its imperative that people like myself who also live here, Expose to the World what's REALLY going on in this Region.
I am happy to report today that this Morning Local Media Stations are reporting that today in Charlotte, NC there will be Cooling Stations Open in Uptown Charlotte at the Hal Marshall Building for People with NO Access to Central Air or Air Conditioners.
Thank GOD!
I Thank God because I know he will protect me for doing what is Right. NOT for doing what is Popular.
Tim Reilly says he knew there was trouble when he returned from work Friday evening and entered his University City townhouse.
Reilly and his wife Dana and their 108-pound bull mastiff Porter had joined the legions of Carolinas residents who lost their air conditioning at the worst possible time – on the day when Charlotte equaled its all-time heat record of 104 degrees.
Charlotte hit the 104-degree mark again Saturday, and the heat wave has air conditioning technicians scrambling to deal with calls from frantic customers who want cool air in their homes again. The situation isn’t likely to improve soon, with 101-degree high temperatures forecasted for Sunday and Monday in Charlotte.
Forecasters see only a gradual relenting of the heat over the next several days, as the powerful high pressure system responsible for setting hundreds of high temperature records across the eastern two-thirds of the nation gradually breaks down early this week. But high temperatures are still expected to be in the 90s all week – and in the upper 90s for the Independence Day holiday.
As of late Saturday afternoon, Medic had taken six people to Charlotte-area hospitals for heat-related injuries, spokeswoman Katie Rutland said. She said one person had life-threatening injuries and three others had potentially life-threatening injuries.
In northwest South Carolina, authorities in Abbeville County are awaiting autopsy results to determine if a 71-year-old man whose body was found in his trailer home near Calhoun Falls was a victim of the heat. When authorities arrived Friday afternoon, they discovered Billy Johnson dead in a home with no air conditioning and a small fan blowing.
If you’re looking for a glint of good news on the weather, and it’s just a glint, the Charlotte area will be under a heat advisory on Sunday, rather than the more severe excessive heat warning that was in place Saturday. That means a heat index of 105 degrees, rather than 110.
There will be one other difference Sunday and Monday. With the high pressure system weakening, clusters of thunderstorms that have been forming each day in the Midwest and pushing southward will be able to reach the Carolinas. That means there will be a chance of storms both Sunday and Monday nights.
All of that seemed very distant Saturday.
No escaping the swamp
Charlotte, Greenville-Spartanburg, Asheville and Raleigh were among many cities setting records for the date or the month. It was 107 degrees at 5 p.m. in Columbia, a day after it reached 108.
In the immediate Charlotte area, a number of automated thermometers recorded 105 or 106 degrees. Stacey Johnson, who lives off Rea Road in south Charlotte, said a temperature gauge there showed 111 degrees Friday. Even Boone, at 3,333 feet altitude, had a 91-degree temperature Saturday.
That was quite a test of air conditioning systems across the region. Like others without air conditioning, Tim and Dana Reilly had to make a decision Friday night – stick it out at home, or seek shelter with a friend or at a motel.
“We had offers from friends, but we didn’t want to bring our 108-pound dog with us,” Dana Reilly said. “So we stayed home.”
The got out several fans and slept on the floor, thinking the warmest air in their three-story townhouse would rise. The temperature slowly climbed to 83 degrees by the time Jeff Buhl, of All City Heat and Air Conditioning, arrived at 9 a.m. Saturday. The Reillys were the first of many service calls on Buhl’s schedule for the day.
Buhl got a “warm welcome” from the Reillys when he got out of his truck and walked to the rear entrance of the townhouse, where the air conditioning compressor was located. “I get that a lot during heat waves,” Buhl said. “I’m sort of a savior.”
This time, the fix was relatively easy. A capacitor had blown, and Buhl had the system repaired and running in 15 minutes.
“That’s fairly common,” said Buhl, who has spent about two decades in HVAC work. “A lot of times, they’ll blow from power surges.”
Within a half-hour, the temperature had dropped into the upper 70s at the Reillys’ residence. Buhl cautioned the couple that the cooling process would be a slow go, with temperatures climbing above 100 degrees again Saturday.
The most common problems with the systems are Freon leaks, blown capacitors and burned contactors, Buhl said. Occasionally, there’ll be a big problem – a motor or compressor failure.
Controlling the grid
But he saw several cases of another problem Friday.
“I had three calls from people with load boxes,” he said. Buhl said the boxes are installed by Duke Energy as a means of saving energy use during peak demand periods. Customers get lower electricity rates. In return, Duke Energy can cut off the power to high-use equipment, like air conditioning, for short periods of time, Buhl said. Typically, that is five to 10 minutes.
Buhl said some customers found their air conditioning units not working and immediately called for service.
“People get the boxes and don’t understand what they do,” he said. “There are tens of thousands of those boxes installed in the Charlotte area.”
Tim and Dana Reilly said it was the first time their air conditioning had gone out during a heat wave. “I hope it doesn’t happen again,” Dana Reilly said. “That was not pleasant.”
While the Reillys were able to cope with the lack of cooling, local officials are worried that some people – especially the elderly and those with chronic health problems – could be at serious risk without fans or air conditioning during the 100-degree weather.
Social service agencies opened cooling stations across the region, distributed financial aid so some people could pay their power bills and keep the air conditioning going and distributed fans.
In York County, sheriff’s office spokesman Trent Faris said deputies were delivering fans to those in need.
While residents without air conditioning are suffering, so are the technicians. Buhl spent two hours late Friday afternoon on the roof of an Eastway Drive restaurant, repairing a system. When he touched his knee to the roof surface, he received a burn.
As the new Duke Energy prepares to begin corporate life this week, after 18 months of regulatory filings and after-hours rulings, winning approval might start to look like the easy part.
In the years ahead, Duke’s leaders will have to mesh two corporate cultures into the nation’s largest utility and trim 1,860 jobs. They will spread $650 million in operating savings among Carolinas customers – while raising rates. They’ll decide the fate of a crippled nuclear reactor in Florida and try to settle the huge cost overruns of a new plant in Indiana.
The $32 billion merger with Progress Energy will give Duke the financial heft and political muscle that make hard problems a little easier to solve. It culminates decades of growth through mergers and acquisitions for both companies. North Carolina regulators approved the deal Friday; South Carolina’s utilities commission meets on the final piece Monday.
Wall Street is bullish on the deal, which diversifies Duke’s earnings and power sources. Duke’s stock price has surged 30 percent, and Progress’ stock 35 percent, since the merger was announced in January 2011.
For Duke’s 7.1 million customers, it’s a mixed bag. They’ll see a power company that’s leaner and, Duke hopes, more efficient. It will be able to borrow money at lower rates, saving money for customers.
But customers pay for what utilities build, and Duke is on a construction binge. After decades of little change, power bills are going up.
Old coal plants, some dating to the 1920s, will be shut down rather than upgraded to meet new environmental standards. Duke and Progress are building new natural-gas plants to take advantage of cheaper, cleaner fuel. Both want to build nuclear plants – price tags estimated in the $10 billion range – but may share new ones with other utilities.
“All of that is going to drive our prices up,” Duke CEO Jim Rogers told the Observer. “The reason you do a merger is to make you stronger financially, but also because anything that offsets a rise in price is a good thing.”
Before the merger, Duke already had invested more than $3 billion in three new power plants. It won a 7 percent North Carolina rate hike in January to pay for them, raising typical customer bills $7, and will ask for another this summer. This fall, Progress, which has nearly $2 billion in new plants to pay for, will seek its first base-rate increase since 1988.
For most Carolinas customers, the $650 million in fuel savings Duke will share with them over five to six years will come to about $1 a month.
The new Duke Energy will be the world’s second-largest private utility, the company says. If it were a nation, its generating capacity would rank 14th-largest globally, just behind South Korea. Rogers jokes that he’s ruled out applying for membership in the United Nations.
The combined political action committees of Duke and Progress would be the state’s largest, based on past spending, the watchdog group Democracy North Carolina has reported. Duke is likely to be interested in nuclear plant financing, environmental rules and carbon legislation.
Environmentalists insist that, with its new clout, Duke takes on a larger obligation to replace its coal plants with renewable energy.
“Duke has so much power that if they went in a new direction, it could change everything,” said Jim Warren, director of Duke’s most dogged merger opponent, the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network.
Duke’s to-do list
While the old Duke prided itself on its engineering savvy, power plants on the northern and southern ends of its new range show how wrong construction projects can go.
In Indiana, the Edwardsport coal-fired power plant has leading-edge technology that will produce low emissions but is more than $1 billion over budget. Duke’s former No. 2 executive and Indiana’s top utility regulator lost their jobs after chatting by email about it.
In Florida, Progress’ Crystal River nuclear plant needed large new replacement parts called steam generators. Progress punched a hole through the reactor’s thick concrete containment structure to replace the components. Now the concrete is failing.
Repairing the damage is estimated to cost up to $1.3 billion. Progress is negotiating with insurers but could end up retiring the reactor.
Crystal River loomed as Duke’s directors considered the Progress deal. The merger agreement gave Duke the option of walking away if costs rose enough to affect about 15 percent or more of the combined company’s value.
“We don’t perceive it as being that big a problem, so we don’t perceive our right to walk has been triggered,” Rogers said. “So the short answer is, this is in the ordinary course of business that this has happened, and we’ll deal with it.”
He ranks it No. 1 on the new Duke’s to-do list.
Destined for marriage?
The corporate marriage of Duke and Progress seemed inevitable to some of the people who have worked for the companies.
Both were born more than a century ago. Duke built its first hydroelectric plant on the Catawba River near Charlotte. Progress’ oldest still-operating hydro plant dammed the Pee Dee River, just 65 miles east.
Duke electrified the cotton mills that fueled Charlotte’s industrial growth. Progress became synonymous with downtown Raleigh, moving only three blocks, from Martin to Fayetteville streets, since 1908.
From its beginnings, Duke prided itself on building its own power plants and running them well. Engineers or linemen could expect to spend their careers there.
“The motto was, ‘Do it yourself and do it right,’ ” said Cathy Roche, a retired senior vice president who joined Duke in 1983. “We looked down on the companies that hired the big construction firms to build nuclear plants, with huge cost overruns.”
Duke and Progress have had separate retail territories in the Carolinas but competed for wholesale customers. They also helped each other make repairs after storms in the turbulent Southeast.
Through the decades, both grew by combining with other companies. Now they’re part of a national trend. In 1995, 98 investor-owned U.S. utilities operated. Last year there were 55.
Duke and Progress dabbled in natural gas as deregulation swept through the industry in the 1990s, but both have refocused on electricity.
Progress is considered the more conservative company.
It now owns only regulated businesses that provide service to state-designated territories, a model investors regard as less risky. Nearly one-quarter of Duke’s revenue last year came from unregulated commercial businesses, such as its western wind farms and international division in Latin America.
How merger talks began
Progress began talking about potential mergers with two unidentified utilities in 2009, according to securities filings. Duke identified Progress as a potential partner the next year.
An intermediary, Duke financial adviser JPMorgan Securities, put the companies in touch.
Both companies envisioned greater financial strength as a combination, including access to capital needed to build new nuclear plants. The Progress board would get their chief executive, Bill Johnson, as the new Duke CEO, and faster earnings growth. A move toward more regulated businesses appealed to Duke directors.
Rogers, then Duke’s CEO, called Johnson in July 2010 to ask for a meeting.
Over the following months, the companies sparred over the number of Duke shares to be swapped for each Progress share and the composition of the board. Negotiations continued until the eve of Jan. 8, 2011, when the merger agreement was signed.
Progress investors will get 2.6125 Duke shares for each of theirs and will own 37 percent of the combined stock. Duke will hold 11 of the 18 board seats and five of the top nine officers under Johnson and Rogers.
Phone calls came from other potential acquirers, to both companies, hours before Duke and Progress signed their deal.
2 cultures must become one
Now the new Duke, with more than 29,000 employees across six states, must make two cultures one.
“It’s not just about your asset and operational mix, it’s about how you do business,” Rogers said. “There’s a difference in the ‘how’ and we need to work together to find the common ‘how’ going forward.”
Some Duke workers contend the new company will be tilted toward Progress’ leadership, although executive charts roughly parallel the companies’ relative size.
“There is a general concern over why the Duke board of directors and Jim Rogers are allowing Progress to come in and run so much of the company when ultimately, we are bailing Progress Energy out,” one employee emailed the Observer last week.
Johnson, the new Duke CEO, says the utilities are more alike than not.
“They’re not so much cultural (differences) as style, maybe,” he said. “For example, Duke has a much broader business mix and they tend to think about a lot of issues, and we tend to think only about the utility business. Our scope of focus is a lot narrower, which allows us to really just focus on just one thing.
“That’s the difference between the two management teams that the Progress folks are going to have to adjust to, because all of a sudden we’re a lot broader and bigger.”
Johnson says he’ll work to soothe a workforce that’s jumpy after a long merger process that left some unsure whether they’ll have jobs.
True impact of mergers
Studies of past utility mergers show that predicted operating savings are often hard to achieve. Combined companies may not find real economies of scale if they’ve already slashed costs before merging.
“Pretty consistently, you could characterize utilities as putting forward claims that turn out to be optimistic,” said Peter Schwarz, a UNC Charlotte economics professor who studies the electricity industry. “The difficulties of operating the merged companies have typically been underestimated.”
Schwarz, who has researched electricity pricing for Duke, said the ultimate test of the merger’s impact is whether the company’s costs are lower than they would have been. If they are, he said, consumers as a whole should benefit.
Even then, he added, some customers could pay more.
Duke and Progress will operate separately in the Carolinas for a few years. Duke’s North Carolina rates are now lower than Progress’, but the rates will have to be roughly the same once the Progress name disappears.
North Carolina’s Public Staff, which advocates for retail customers, did its own studies of whether the $650 million in post-merger fuel savings the utilities projected are likely to be accurate. The staff will assess other operating savings when rate cases are filed this year.
“They’ve got every incentive in the world to achieve all the savings,” said Gisele Rankin, a Public Staff lawyer. “And if they don’t achieve them, we’ll ding them in the rate cases.”
The N.C. Utilities Commission, in approving Duke’s 2006 merger with Ohio-based Cinergy, ordered Duke to return 42 percent of its expected savings to customers.
That translated into a one-year, $117.5 million rate cut.
For decades, utilities used mergers to grow. Now they more often see combinations as a way to stay profitable amid slumping demand while building new power plants and upgrading older ones.
“The logic has changed from what mergers used to be about,” said Pattabi Seshadri, a Dallas partner with The Boston Consulting Group in Dallas. “It used to be about bigger scale, growth and access to different markets. Now it’s more defensive in preserving balance-sheet strength and building financial flexibility.”
Utilities that overpay for acquisitions, cede too much to regulators or don’t find post-merger efficiencies can fail to add value, studies show.
An analysis by the global management consulting firm found that fewer than half of the utility mergers from 1997 to 2005 met their savings goals. Total shareholder returns typically fell after mergers.
Despite that, the group says merger opportunities await. Five utility mergers were announced in 2011, including the Duke-Progress deal.
Rogers predicts Duke will be in no hurry to make more acquisitions.
“But you have to be opportunistic,” he added. “That’s one of the lessons I learned, that you have to be opportunistic in what may come your way.”
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