Winning Progressive

With Hurricane Sandy walloping New York, New Jersey, and other parts of the East Coast with powerful winds, torrential rains, and a massive storm surge, there is renewed interest in a long running debate regarding the proper role of the federal government in providing relief for areas of our nation hit by natural disasters.

On one side are conservatives who seek to privatize disaster relief or devolve it to the states.  For example, when tornadoes ravaged Joplin, Missouri in May 2011 and the Ohio River Valley in May 2012, Mitt Romney, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Gov. John Kasich (R-OH), and other Republicans attacked the idea of federal disaster relief.  And the GOP has continued to push for cuts in the budgets for Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association despite the critical roles those agencies play in predicting, preparing for, and dealing with the consequences of natural disasters.

On the other side, Democrats believe that the federal government should must take the lead in helping people and communities recover from natural disasters, and in rebuilding infrastructure in the wake of such disasters.  As such, Democrats during both the Clinton and Obama Administrations have worked to rebuild relief agencies such as FEMA that had been decimated by Republican rule.

Below is a post from March 2011 explaining the philosophical differences between the parties on the issue of disaster relief, and how those differences have real world impacts in the lives of millions of Americans who are or will be impacted by natural disasters.  While the post was written approximately 18 months ago, we think it holds true to this day.

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“It Ain’t Like Katrina – We’re Getting Help”

Here at Winning Progressive, we define progressivism as the belief that we should use the tools of government to advance important individual and societal goals that individuals cannot reasonably achieve on their own and/or that the free market will not provide. We can and should have debates over whether specific government programs should be reformed, shrunk, expanded, or eliminated, and how we improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the government programs we have, as such debates are critical to ensuring that government serves the need of the public.  Unfortunately, for years now conservatives have focused not on such a debate, but instead have sought to vilify government as an evil entity that needs to largely be eliminated.  Such a philosophy is detached from reality and does little to benefit the American people.

A prime example of the failure of conservative vilification of government can be seen from the contrast between emergency disaster response to the recent tornadoes in the South, which caused more than 300 deaths and untold property damage, and that of the response to disasters like Hurricane Katrina under the George W. Bush Administration.  The response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”) to Hurricane Katrina was inexcusably negligent, as we’ve previously described here.    By contrast, FEMA’s response to the disaster created by the tornadoes in the South has been quite efficient and effective, with even Republican local officials praising the job being done by FEMA.    As a local resident was quoted as saying:

“It ain’t like Katrina,” said Darius Rutley, 21, whose house in Alberta was obliterated. “We’re getting help.”

As Kevin Drum has noted at his Mother Jones blog, the difference in FEMA’s effectiveness to the Southern tornadoes versus Katrina is part of a larger pattern of effective emergency responses during Democratic Administrations and ineffective responses during Republican Administrations.  And the reason for that contrast is that one party has focused on making FEMA an effective government agency, while the other has been blinded by an ideological opposition to government that has served to undermine FEMA’s effectiveness.  The contrast can be seen with regards to:

• Appointees: Under President Clinton, FEMA was headed by James Lee Witt, the first FEMA director with emergency planning experience, who turned FEMA into a highly effective agency that successfully handled a number of major disasters. For example, FEMA advance teams were on the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 within five hours and three minutes.  President Bush replaced Witt with Joe Allbaugh.  What were Allbaugh’s qualifications to head FEMA?  He had no emergency relief experience, but he was Bush’s campaign chairman!  In 2003, Allbaugh was replaced by Michael Brown, a longtime friend of Allbaugh who also had no emergency relief experience, but was a big time Republican donor and had previously run the International Arabian Horse Association.  The Obama Administration returned to experience rather than cronyism as the basis for selecting a FEMA head. President Obama’s FEMA is run by W. Craig Fugate, who spent eight years as the Director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management and previously worked as emergency manager for Alachua County, Florida for over a decade.

• Philosophy: In May 2001, Bush’s FEMA Director Allbaugh testified to a Senate subcommittee that:

Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management.  Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level.

Similarly, in April 2001, Bush’s budget director, Mitch Daniels, announced the goal of privatizing much of FEMA’s work. As just one example, in June 2004, FEMA turned the task of developing a hurricane disaster plan for New Orleans over to a private consulting firm named Innovative Emergency Management. In light of the response to Katrina, it appears that if they did come up with a plan, it was not innovative and did not involve any management.

By contrast, President Obama’s FEMA Director, Craig Fugate, has focused not on trying to shrink or eliminate FEMA, but rather on making the agency effective in doing its job of responding to emergencies.

• Budgetary Cutbacks: In 2003, FEMA was made part of the Department of Homeland Security.  At the same time, its budget was cut and 500 of its staffers were laid off. In addition, three quarters of the funds that the agency spent on local emergency preparedness and first-responders was shifted to terrorism response rather than natural disasters and accidents.  By contrast, over the past five years, FEMA’s operating budget has increased by nearly $2.5 billion.

The bottom line is that, as the contrast between the Katrina and Southern tornadoes responses shows, a belief by our elected officials in competent, effective government can be the difference between our fellow Americans pulling through disasters as quickly as possible or being left victims of forces far beyond their control.  In other words, in the real world beliefs about government matter.

For this weekend’s reading list, we have reports on conservative plans to bully voters on Election Day, the facts on who doesn’t pay federal income taxes and why, how state tax codes can be used to reduce poverty, the Obama Administration’s regulations aimed at greatly reducing sexual assaults in prisons, and increasing segregation in our schools.

Bullies at the Ballot Box - a report on the plans of True the Vote and other right-wing organization to hinder voting by people of color and other Democratic-leaning groups through overly aggressive and unfounded Election Day challenges to the eligibility of voters in Democratic precincts. For more on this voter suppression effort, see this New York Times article.  And to help defend the right to vote, sign up for the Democratic Party’s election protection efforts.

Misconceptions and Realities About Who Pays Taxes - in the aftermath of the revelation of Mitt Romney’s offensive comments about people who owe no federal income taxes, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has released a report explaining which groups of people don’t pay federal income taxes and how much in other types of taxes most of those folks do pay.

State Tax Codes as Poverty Fighting Tools - a report documenting how state tax policies, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and child care tax credits, can be used to help reduce poverty.

Prison Rape: Obama’s Program to Stop It – A review of how we can greatly reduce the 209,000 sexual assaults that occur in US prisons every year, and how the Obama Administration’s recently finalized standards for reducing sexual assaults in prison are expected to be successful.

E Pluribus . . . Segregation: Deepening Double Segregation for More Students – a report on how schools in the US are becoming more racially segregated and how government could take action to reduce such segregation.

How much would you want to be paid to take a job that involved wiping feces from a grown person’s rear end every day, being regularly cussed at by a verbally aggressive client, and having to bathe, groom, and feed someone who could not do those tasks themselves?  Nearly 1.8 million in-home caregivers in the US do these and other tasks every day, yet are not covered by the minimum wage, overtime, and working condition protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).  The Obama Administration’s Department of Labor (“DOL”)  has issued a proposed regulation that would finally cover these workers under the FLSA, thereby providing them with fairer wages and working conditions.  Predictably, the home health care industry that is profiting so much off of the recent massive increase of the use of in-home caregiving services is fighting the proposal tooth-and-nail.  Help support the Obama Administration’s proposal by submitting to the DOL a comment in support of the proposal by March 21, 2012, and by writing a supportive letter to your local newspaper editor.

For Winning Progressive, this issue is especially personal.  As our regular readers may recall, my father has had progressively advancing dementia for the past four or so years.  As my Dad’s mental acuity and physical health have declined, we have hired caregivers to assist him with virtually every aspect of daily living.  These caregivers have been absolutely invaluable in my Dad’s life, keeping him not only clean, safe, and well-fed, but also happy, engaged, and content.  In-home caregivers do difficult and largely thankless work.  They should at least receive the same types of workplace protections that most other employees receive under the FLSA.

As the DOL explains, the FLSA was established in 1938 to ensure that workers would be ensured a minimum wage, overtime pay, and certain workplace protections.  In order to get the votes of Southern legislators necessary for passage, however, the original FLSA exempted nearly 80% of workers, including domestic services workers, such as cooks, housekeepers, and gardeners, who are employed directly by the household in which they work.  If those workers were employed by a third party agency, however, they were entitled to FLSA protections.  Congress ended the domestic service workers exemption in 1974, but created a narrow exemption for babysitters and companions for the aged and infirm.  In 1975, the DOL issued regulations extending that narrow exemption not only to companions hired directly by a household, but also by those who are employed by third party home health care agencies that families use to find caregivers.  That regulatory exemption was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2007 decision of Long Island Care at Home v. Coke.

The Obama DOL’s proposal would reverse the 1975 regulations and ensure that in-home caregivers hired through home health care agencies are covered by the FLSA.  The proposal would also clarify that the companionship exemption for the aged and infirm is limited to fellowship and protection tasks such as taking walks, visiting friends, or playing cards, and  does not extend to the types of medically-related services that in-home caregivers typically provide.  The result of these changes is that the vast majority of the nearly 1.8 million in-home caregivers in the US would be covered by the FLSA.

The Obama DOL’s proposal is plainly the right thing to do.  There is simply no reason that in-home caregivers should not be entitled to the same workplace protections that virtually all other workers have.   But the proposal has set off a political backlash. One of the biggest home health care agencies – Home Instead Senior Care – reportedly spent more than $360,000 in 2011 fighting efforts to cover their caregivers under the FLSA.  Home Instead is an international corporation that had $685 million in revenue in 2008.  It is part of an industry that a leading investment analyst has described as a “vibrantly-growing, multi-billion dollar segment of the U.S. economy,” and that had a 19.4% profit margin in 2010.  The suggestion that this industry cannot afford to have its caregivers covered under the FLSA would be laughable if it were not so repulsive.

By contrast, the people who would benefit from the proposed rule change are not economically well-off or politically powerful.  As the DOL explains at its blog, Work in Progress:

Many of these workers are the primary breadwinners for their families. Of the roughly 2 million workers who will be affected by this rule, more than 92 percent are women, nearly 50 percent are minorities, and nearly 40 percent rely on public benefits such as Medicaid and food stamps. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, home health care aides earn about $21,000 a year and many lack health insurance.

The DOL in-home caregiver proposal is a great example of a comparatively small, but important, step that a Presidential administration can take to make real, positive change in the lives of every day Americans.  Because the people who are benefited by these steps typically lack political power, however, such proposals can often get overwhelmed by focused lobbying by an interested industry that would be impacted.  It is incumbent on all of us to help balance the scales here by speaking up in favor of the Obama DOL’s proposal to ensure that in-home caregivers are covered by the FLSA.  Do so by:

* learning more about the proposal at the DOL’s webpage on the proposed rule

* commenting in favor of the proposed rule by March 21, 2012

* writing a letter to your local newspaper editor in favor of providing in-home caregivers the same protections the rest of us enjoy

For this weekend’s reading list we have stories on the impressive scope of President Obama’s achievements, the $635 billion we have wasted militarizing police forces, why full employment is good for the working class, why environmental funders need to focus on building a grassroots movement, and a debunking of climate deniers.

If you have feedback on any of these articles, or would like to recommend a story for next weekend’s reading list, let us know in the comment section below, or at the Winning Progressive Facebook page.

The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama – a thorough accounting of how President Obama has achieved more in the first three years of his Presidency than any other President has in decades. Here is our list of accomplishments achieved by the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats in 2009 and 2010.

The Cost of America’s Police State – a report on the nearly $650 billion we have spent since the September 11 attacks militarizing police forces throughout the US against a threat that is largely non-existent.

The Case for Full Employment – an analysis showing how having full employment – i.e., the lowest unemployment rate consistent with stable inflation – as the goal of our economic system benefits working and middle class Americans and reduces economic inequality.

Cultivating the Grassroots: A Winning Approach for Environment and Climate Funders - a critique of how funders of environmental causes have focused too much on top-down, D.C. based strategies and not enough on building a grassroots movement to support and push the environmental agenda

Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong – a debunking of myths offered by climate deniers regarding whether climate change is occurring, how humans are causing climate change, how it will impact us, and whether climate scientists are profiting off concerns about climate change.

Desperate to find a way to halt their slide in the polls, Republicans have tried to blame President Obama for rising gas prices, claiming that he has somehow failed to make the US energy independent.  Entirely on cue, much of the mainstream media has echoed this attack, giving wall-to-wall coverage of high gas prices and GOP claims about it.  But the attack is entirely off-base, as rising gas prices are caused primarily by increasing demand overseas, and the long term solutions – increased fuel efficiency and development of alternative fuels – are being promoted by President Obama and fought by the very same Republicans who are trying to make a political issue out of gas prices.

There is no dispute that gas prices have been going up, though they remain below the high reached in mid-2008 and they were kept unnaturally low in late 2008 and 2009 due to the Bush Recession.  But Republican claims about energy independence, the purported need to “drill, baby, drill,” and the alleged refusal of the Obama Administration to allow energy development are simply false.  In reality, US oil production is at an eight year high, to the chagrin of many environmentalists (including Winning Progressive) the number of oil rigs in operation have skyrocketed, the U.S. was a net oil product exporter in 2011 for the first time since 1949, and as the image above shows, U.S. dependence on foreign oil has declined every year since President Obama took office.

The reality of the situation is that oil and gas prices are set by a global market that is largely beyond the reach of any U.S. President.  For example, the biggest cause of the increase in gas prices is skyrocketing demand for gas and oil in China, India, and other rapidly developing nations which is pushing up prices globally.  Second, supply disruptions in Syria, Sudan, Yemen, and the North Sea has at least temporarily reduced global supply.  Third, concerns about a possible military conflict with Iran (which many conservatives are actively cheerleading) has created an opening for financial speculators to drive oil prices up even more.

Contrary to the Republicans’ caterwauling, there is little that President Obama, or any other political leader, can do to force gas prices to decline.   Instead, there are two things that need to be done to address rising gas prices.  The first is to reduce income inequality in the US, in order to alleviate the impact that rising gas prices have on working class and poor Americans.  On that front, President Obama has been actively fighting for a fairer tax and economic system, while the GOP has focused almost entirely on trying to reduce taxes for the wealthiest 1%. In light of this record, the GOP’s claims to care about the impact of gas prices on consumers rings hollow.

Second, we have to find ways to reduce and eventually end our dependence on oil from any source over the long term so that Americans need to purchase less gas.  And on that front, President Obama, while far from perfect, has shown leadership often in the face of pathological intransigence from the GOP.

Most importantly, the Obama Administration has significantly increased vehicle efficiency in order to reduce the amount of gas Americans need to purchase.  In April 2010, the Administration finalized a regulation increasing Corporate Average Fuel Economy (“CAFE”) standards for cars to 35.5 miles per gallon (“mpg”) by 2016.  Last year, the Obama Administration reached an agreement with the auto industry to increase average fuel economy for cars and light-duty trucks to 54.5mpg by 2025.  Such standard will save $1.7 trillion in fuel costs for American consumers and reduce oil usage by 2.2 million barrels per day.

Second, as Josh Marks explained a couple of days ago, President Obama has been actively investing in developing alternative fuels, such as algae-based biofuels that could replace up to 17% of our nation’s oil imports.  Republicans are, predictably, mocking the algae research, even though they previously requested federal support for such research.

Third, President Obama has sought to end the more than $4 billion of taxpayer subsidies that the oil industry receives every year.  In a speech yesterday in New Hampshire, the President explained how those subsidies give the oil industry an unfair economic advantage over cleaner fuel sources, and could be used to, among other things, help finance the transition to cleaner fuels.  To date, Republicans have refused to heed Obama’s call on ending oil industry subsidies, so the President is turning up the pressure by urging his supporters to call their Congresspeople and Senators and demand that they vote to end the subsidies.

From a progressive perspective, President Obama has been far from perfect on the issue of gas prices and clean energy.  For example, he has yet to follow through on his call during the 2008 election campaign for a windfall profits tax on oil companies that could be used to reduce the impact of high gas prices on lower income Americans.  In addition, President Obama’s framing of his energy policy as an “all-of-the-above” strategy could improperly suggest that fossil fuels (including coal) are a key part of the long term energy solution.  In fact, while we will need natural gas and oil for the foreseeable future, we should be promoting cleaner fuels and efficiency as rapidly as possible.

But these concerns should not distract us from the fact that the Obama Administration is not to blame for rising gas prices, the Administration is making significant progress is advancing fuel efficiency, alternatives fuels, and other long term solutions to rising energy prices, and President Obama rightly rejects the GOP’s fallacious “drill, baby, drill” approach.

Unfortunately, the GOP is trying to ride the gas price issue back to political relevance.  It is up to us to make sure they do not succeed.  Two ways you can help are by writing a letter to your local newspaper editor explaining how rising gas prices will require long term solutions that President Obama is pursuing, and by calling your Congressperson and Senators to urge them to vote to end the more than $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies that the oil industry receives every year.

Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum and Mitt “Dog on Car” Romney spent Tuesday battling in the Michigan GOP Presidential primary election, which Romney ended up narrowly winning.  At the same time, President Obama spent his day reminding the American people how he saved more than 1 million jobs by rescuing the U.S. auto industry.  Few issues make clearer the distinction between President Obama and the Republican Presidential wannabees.

When President Obama took office in January 2009, the U.S. auto industry (along with most of the rest of our economy) was in free fall.  More than 400,000 auto industry jobs had been lost in the previous year and at least two of the Big 3 – GM and Chrysler – were on the brink of running out of money.  In October 2008, President W. Bush agreed, after initial opposition, directed $17.4 billion of the Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to bridge loans for GM and Chrysler.  But far more action was needed and soon after taking office, President Obama offered the two auto companies substantial additional loans in exchange for agreeing to fundamentally restructure their businesses.  Through such restructuring, all of the relevant stakeholders – workers, creditors, shareholders, and executives – made significant sacrifices.

But both companies have emerged from the process and are now thriving again. More than 1 million jobs were saved due to the rescue, and the auto industry has added 200,000 jobs since June 2009.  All of the Big 3 were profitable in 2011 for the first time in seven years, and GM and Chrysler’s sales increased  14 and 26 percent, respectively, last year.  As the companies have recovered, the United Auto Workers have negotiated bonuses, improved profit sharing, and preservation of health care and pension benefits for auto industry workers.  And a strong argument can be made that if GM and Chrysler has been allowed to fail, their suppliers would have also failed, thereby undermining the third US automaker, Ford.

The GOP, of course, vehemently opposed the auto industry rescue.  At the time, Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed in the New York Times opposing the rescue, and since then he has provided a contradictory morass of excuses for why he opposed President Obama’s auto industry rescue.  Romney’s latest excuse is, essentially, that the rescue treated the industry’s unionized workers too well, which is simply false as the workers agreed to concessions on pay, health benefits, vacations, job security, and work rules.  Romney’s primary competitor, Rick Santorum, similarly opposed the auto industry rescue.

While Santorum and Romney were struggling to get Michigan Republicans (and, in Santorum’s case, Michigan Democrats also) out to the polls, President Obama was reminding everyone how successful the auto industry rescue had been.  Below is the video of President Obama’s stemwinder of a speech to the United Auto Workers’ Annual Conference.  It is well worth your time to watch the entire thing, but here is an excerpt that well-illustrates the competing visions that are at stake in the November 2012 elections.

Let me tell you, I keep on hearing these same folks talk about values all the time.  You want to talk about values?  Hard work — that’s a value.  Looking out for one another — that’s a value.  The idea that we’re all in it together, and I’m my brother’s keeper and sister’s keeper — that’s a value.

They’re out there talking about you like you’re some special interest that needs to be beaten down.  Since when are hardworking men and women who are putting in a hard day’s work every day — since when are they special interests?  Since when is the idea that we look out for one another a bad thing?

I remember my old friend, Ted Kennedy — he used to say, what is it about working men and women they find so offensive? This notion that we should have let the auto industry die, that we should pursue anti-worker policies in the hopes that unions like yours will buckle and unravel -– that’s part of that same old “you are on your own” philosophy that says we should just leave everybody to fend for themselves; let the most powerful do whatever they please.  They think the best way to boost the economy is to roll back the reforms we put into place to prevent another crisis, to let Wall Street write the rules again.

They think the best way to help families afford health care is to roll back the reforms we passed that’s already lowering costs for millions of Americans. They want to go back to the days when insurance companies could deny your coverage or jack up your rates whenever and however they pleased. They think we should keep cutting taxes for those at the very top, for people like me, even though we don’t need it, just so they can keep paying lower tax rates than their secretaries.

Well, let me tell you something.  Not to put too fine a point on it — they’re wrong.  They are wrong.  That’s the philosophy that got us into this mess.  We can’t afford to go back to it.  Not now.

. . . . .

We’re fighting for an economy where everybody gets a fair shot, where everybody does their fair share, where everybody plays by the same set of rules.  We’re not going to go back to an economy that’s all about outsourcing and bad debt and phony profits.  We’re fighting for an economy that’s built to last, that’s built on things like education and energy and manufacturing.  Making things, not just buying things — making things that the rest of the world wants to buy.  And restoring the values that made this country great:  hard work and fair play, the chance to make it if you really try, the responsibility to reach back and help somebody else make it, too — not just you.  That’s who we are.  That’s what we believe in.

. . . . .

America is not just looking out for yourself.  It’s not just about greed.  It’s not just about trying to climb to the very top and keep everybody else down.  When our assembly lines grind to a halt, we work together and we get them going again.  When somebody else falters, we try to give them a hand up, because we know we’re all in it together.

I got my start standing with working folks who’d lost their jobs, folks who had lost their hope because the steel plants had closed down.  I didn’t like the idea that they didn’t have anybody fighting for them.  The same reason I got into this business is the same reason I’m here today.  I’m driven by that same belief that everybody — everybody — should deserve a chance

So I promise you this:  As long as you’ve got an ounce of fight left in you, I’ll have a ton of fight left in me.  We’re going to keep on fighting to make our economy stronger; to put our friends and neighbors back to work faster; to give our children even more opportunity; to make sure that the United States of America remains the greatest nation on Earth.