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New York Fast-Food Workers Just Scored a Big Win In Their Fight For a Living Wage

by HungBeirne676 Posted on July 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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In a widely expected move, a panel appointed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recommended today that the state’s minimum wage for employees of fast-food chain restaurants be raised to $15 an hour.

The recommendation comes three years after strikes by New York City fast-food workers set off a national labor movement that has led to the passage of a $15 minimum wage in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. But unlike those cities, New York doesn’t have the power to set its own minimum wage—it’s up to legislators in Albany.

When New York lawmakers balked at raising the minimum wage last year, Gov. Cuomo convened a board to examine wages in the fast food industry, which employs 180,000 people in the state. The state’s labor commissioner, a Cuomo appointee, has the power to issue an order putting the proposal into effect. If he approves the wage hike, fast-food workers currently earning the state’s minimum wage of $8.75 will get a 70 percent raise, effective by 2018 in New York City and 2021 in the rest of the state.

“It’s hard to explain to my children why they can’t do things other kids do,” Barbara Kelley, a Buffalo mother who works at Dunkin’ Donuts and takes home an average of $150 a week, said in a statement released by labor organizers. “With $15 an hour, I will be able to get by and maybe reward my kids in little ways, like ice cream after a long day, and in big ways like being able to save for the future.” Labor organizers are optimistic that the $15 wage will be adopted and will spur raises in other industries.

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New York Fast-Food Workers Just Scored a Big Win In Their Fight For a Living Wage

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By About 2020, We’ll Probably Finally Know Whether a $15 Minimum Wage Is a Good Idea

by JennaLazar Posted on May 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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So my near neighbor of Los Angeles is poised to raise the minimum wage to $15. How should we think of that?

Personally, I’m thrilled. Not because I think it’s a slam-dunk good idea, but because along with Seattle and San Francisco it will give us a great set of natural experiments to figure out what happens when you raise the minimum wage a lot. We can argue all we want; we can extrapolate from other countries; and we can create complex Greek-letter models to predict the effects—but we can’t know until someone actually does it.

So what do I think will happen? Several things:

In the tradeable sector, such as clothing piece work and agriculture, the results are very likely to be devastating. Luckily, LA doesn’t have much agriculture left, but it does have a lot of apparel manufacture. That could evaporate completely (worst case) or perhaps migrate just across the borders into Ventura, San Bernardino, and other nearby counties. Heavier manufacturing will likely be unaffected since most workers already make more than $15.

In the food sector, people still need to eat, and they need to eat in Los Angeles. So there will probably be little damage there from outside competition. However, the higher minimum wage will almost certainly increase the incentive for fast food places to try to automate further and cut back on jobs. How many jobs this will affect is entirely speculative at this point.

Other service industries, including everything from nail salons to education to health care will probably not be affected much. They pretty much have to stay in place in order to serve their local clientele, so they’ll just raise wages and pass the higher prices on to customers.

Likewise, retail, real estate, the arts, and professional services probably won’t be affected too much. Retail has no place to go (though they might be able to automate some jobs away) while the others mostly pay more than $15 already. The hotel industry, by contrast, could easily become less competitive for convention business and end up shedding jobs.

On the bright side, of course, a large number of low-income workers will see their wages rise. On the less bright side, the experience of Puerto Rico suggests that (a) employment losses could be as high as 9 percent, and (b) lots of low-wage workers will flee to other places.

So if I had to guess, I’d say that Los Angeles will see (a) less poverty for low-wage workers who keep their jobs, and (b) higher prices for middle-class consumers, who will end up paying for the minimum wage hike. Since the poor spend more than the middle-class, this could be a net stimulus for the LA economy. On the downside, we’re also pretty likely to see significant job losses. In other words, I agree with Adam Ozimek that we should not treat this as terra incognita just because it’s never been done before:

It’s true that the farther we go out of the historical sample, the more uncertain we are about the magnitude of the impact. But I think minimum wage advocates are taking the wrong message from this. After all, a $100 minimum wage would also be out of sample and subject to the same “we have no clue” and “can’t be on solid ground” statements from Dube and Neumark. But this uncertainty is all in the direction of more job losses. When you enter unprecedented minimum wage hike territory your uncertainty goes up, but so undeniably does your risk of job losses. The idea that a minimum wage hike being of an unprecedented magnitude creates neutral uncertainty is like someone drinking more beer than they ever have just being uncertain about what it will do to their driving ability.

So we’ll see. My own guess is that $15 is too high. I would have supported something in the $10-12 range for a city as large and basically prosperous as Los Angeles. But $15? There’s just too much uncertainty in a number that big, and the uncertainty almost all points in the direction of significant job losses.

But I could be wrong! We now have three cities that are jumping into the deep end of the minimum wage debate, and that will eventually tell us more than all the speculation in the world combined. Fasten your seat belts.

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By About 2020, We’ll Probably Finally Know Whether a $15 Minimum Wage Is a Good Idea

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School Lunches Just Got Way Better in These Six Cities (and It’s Not the Food)

by LesliPlunkett Posted on May 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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School lunches may be healthier than when you were a kid, but the wasteful and polluting materials that cafeterias serve them on have actually gotten worse. In an effort to save on labor and equipment costs, many schools switched from washable trays to disposable foam ones over the past couple of decades. But this trend is now beginning to change.

The school districts of six major cities—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, and Orlando— announced today that they will stop using polystyrene foam trays, and begin serving lunch on compostable plates.

The Urban School Food Alliance, which counts the country’s largest school districts among its members, coordinated the change after developing an affordable compostable plate made from recycled newspaper that costs just a penny more than its foam counterpart.

“Shifting from polystyrene trays to compostable plates will allow these cities to dramatically slash waste sent to landfills, reduce plastics pollution in our communities and oceans, and create valuable compost that can be re-used on our farms,” said Mark Izeman, a senior attorney for the National Resources Defense Council, which partners with the Alliance.

This shift to compostable plates by more than 4,000 schools will save an estimated 225 million petroleum-based plastic trays from going into landfill each year.

What’s next? The Alliance hopes to introduce compostable cutlery by next school year.

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School Lunches Just Got Way Better in These Six Cities (and It’s Not the Food)

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Your Winter Vegetables: Brought to You by California’s Very Last Drops of Water

by Serena8909 Posted on May 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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California’s drought-plagued Central Valley hogs the headlines, but two-thirds of your winter vegetables come from a different part of the state. Occupying a land mass a mere eighth the size of metro Los Angeles, the Imperial Valley churns out about two-thirds of the vegetables eaten by Americans during the winter. Major crops include broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, and, most famously, lettuce and salad mix.

And those aren’t even the region’s biggest moneymakers. Nestled in the state’s southeastern corner, the Imperial Valley also produces massive amounts of alfalfa, a cattle feed, and its teeming feedlots finish some 350,000 beef cows per year.

In terms of native aquatic resources, the Imperial makes the Central Valley look like Waterworld. At least the Central Valley is bound by mountain ranges to the east that, in good years (not the last several), deliver abundant snowmelt for irrigation. The Imperial sits in the middle of the blazing-hot Sonoran Dessert, with no water-trapping mountains anywhere nearby. It receives a whopping 3 inches of precipitation per year on average; even the more arid half of the Central Valley gets 15 inches.

The sole source of water in the Imperial Valley is the Colorado River, which originates hundreds of miles northeast, in the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains. As it winds down from its source in the snow-capped peaks of northern Colorado down to Mexico, it delivers a total of 16.5 million acre-feet of water to the farmers and 40 million consumers in seven US states and northern Mexico who rely on it. (An acre-foot is the amount it takes to flood an acre of land with 12 inches of water—about 326,000 gallons.)

Of that total, the Imperial Valley’s farms gets 3.1 million acre-feet annually—more than half of California’s total allotment and more than any other state draws from the river besides Colorado. It’s an amount of water equivalent to more than four times what Los Angeles uses in a year, according to figures from the Pacific Institute.

The Colorado Rivers waters are so in demand that they rarely reach their endpoint in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. Map: Shannon/Wikimedia Commons

Because it owns senior water rights based on a 1931 pact, the Imperial gets its allotments during low-flow years even when other regions see reductions. Currently, the Rocky Mountain snowpack that feeds the Colorado stands at about 44 percent of its average for this time of year, triggering fears of an impending shortfall—but not for the Imperial. “Nevada, southern Arizona and Mexico will be cut back before the Imperial district loses a drop,” The Los Angeles Times recently reported. Whereas Central Valley farmers, reliant on vanishing snowmelt from the Sierras, have seen their irrigation allotments curtailed the last two years, growers in the Imperial Valley haven’t lost any water (though the Imperial Valley District did agree to sell as much as 0.2 million acre-feet of water by 2021, of its 3.1 million acre-foot allotment, to fast-growing San Diego in a 2003 deal).

Already, decades of intensive desert farming have had severe ecological effects, epitomized by that beleaguered inland body of water known as the Salton Sea, which sits uneasily at the Imperial’s northern edge. Before the big irrigation projects that made the valley bloom, what’s now the Salton periodically captured flood waters from the then-mighty Colorado River. Now it’s fed solely from Imperial Valley farm runoff, and as Dana Goodyear shows in a superb recent New Yorker piece, it’s slowly decaying into a toxic mess—one that could “emit as much as a hundred tons of fine, caustic dust a day, leading to respiratory illness in the healthy and representing an acute hazard for people with compromised immune systems.”

Meanwhile, the Colorado’s flow has proven inadequate to supply the broader region’s needs. In a paper last year (my account of it here), University of California-Irvine and NASA researchers found that farmers, landowners, and municipalities are supplementing their river allocations by drawing water from underground aquifers at a much faster rate than had been known. Between December 2004 and November 2013, the Colorado Basin lost almost 53 million acre-feet of underground water, an enormous fossil resource siphoned away in less than a decade.

A desert in bloom: the Imperial Valley as seen from space, from a photo taken by NASA astronauts in 2002. Photo: NASA

Consider also that the Southwest’s population is on pace to expand by a third by 2030—and that the river’s annual average flow is expected to decrease by anywhere from 5 percent to 18 percent by 2050, compared to 20th century averages, according to the National Climate Assessment, throttled by rising temperatures and declining precipitation.

Thus the Imperial’s 2.6 million acre-foot allotment of water is looking increasingly vulnerable to challenge. Just as we probably need to get used to sourcing more of our summer fruits and vegetables from places beyond California’s Central and Salinas valleys, the Colorado River situation makes me wonder if we shouldn’t rethink those bountiful supermarket produce aisles in February, as well.

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Your Winter Vegetables: Brought to You by California’s Very Last Drops of Water

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Re-live the Kingbees’ Rockabilly Revival

by KashaLuciano Posted on May 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Kingbees
self-titled
Omnivore

The rise of punk and new wave back in the late ’70s and early ’80s was accompanied by a mini-rockabilly revival, the most notable commercial success being Brian Setzer’s Stray Cats. Another eminently satisfying act was Los Angeles’ Kingbees, a spunky trio fronted by Jamie James, a spirited dude seemingly possessed by the ghost of Buddy Holly. There’s nothing profound on the expanded edition of this crisp 1980 debut album—just a bunch of snappy originals, including the semi-hit “My Mistake” and deft covers of Don Gibson (“Sweet Sweet Girl to Me”), Eddie Cochran (“Somethin’ Else”) and Buddy himself (“Not Fade Away”). But if you need a quick pick-me-up, check out “Shake-Bop” or “Ting-a-Ling.” They’ll put a spring in your step, guaranteed.

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Re-live the Kingbees’ Rockabilly Revival

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California’s Almonds Suck as Much Water Annually as Los Angeles Uses in Three Years

by minecrafty Posted on January 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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More stories about the almond boom and what it means for California.


Invasion of the Hedge Fund Almonds


Charts: Almonds Suck as Much Water Annually as LA Uses in 3 Years


Photos: The Story Behind California’s Nut Boom


It Takes How Much Water to Grow an Almond?!


Lay Off the Almond Milk, You Ignorant Hipsters

California’s worst drought on record isn’t stopping the state from growing massive amounts of nuts: The state produces over 80 percent of the world’s almonds and 43 and 28 percent of the world’s pistachios and walnuts, respectively. As Mother Jones’ Tom Philpott details in this longread, the state’s almond market in particular has taken off: What was a $1.2 billion market in 2002 became $4.8 billion market by 2012.

Why are the almond growth rates so…nuts? (Sorry.) One reason is that the average American now eats two pounds of the crunchy snack per year—more than twice as much as a decade ago. But the biggest demand is coming from abroad: The US now exports 70 percent of almonds.

The thing is, nuts use a whole lot of water: it takes about a gallon of water to grow one almond, and nearly five gallons to produce a walnut. Residents across the state are being told to take shorter showers and stop watering their lawns, but the acreage devoted to the state’s almond orchards have doubled in the past decade. The amount of water that California uses annually to produce almond exports would provide water for all Los Angeles homes and businesses for almost three years.

China and Hong Kong together are the top buyers of US almonds; as Philpott writes, “Between 2007 and 2013, US almond exports to China and Hong Kong more than quadrupled, feeding a growing middle class’ appetite for high-protein, healthy food.”

Yet the center of almond farming—and the farming of lots of the US’s fruits and veggies—is exactly where the worst the most extreme drought is taking place. To make up for the water shortage, farmers are pumping groundwater—the underground water that feeds aquifers, serving as a savings account of sorts for the state’s water supply.

As the value of treenuts soars, the water required to support crops is pumped from a groundwater supply that has been shrinking for decades.

So how does the amount of water used to create nuts stack up with the water we use in our daily life? Check out the graphic below:

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California’s Almonds Suck as Much Water Annually as Los Angeles Uses in Three Years

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Los Angeles Prepares To Be Played Yet Again By the NFL

by MattDowning Posted on January 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here’s your sports factlet of the day:

More than half of the NFL’s 32 teams have used moving to L.A. as leverage since the Raiders and Rams pulled up stakes, playing their last games here on Christmas Eve 1994.

It’s like Lucy and the football. Los Angeles is Charlie Brown, and we keep thinking that this time she won’t pull it away. But she always does. And why not?

The tactic works. Since the last pro game here, 27 NFL stadiums have been built or undergone at least $400 million in renovations. “There’s no question that’s part of the game,” said R.D. Hubbard, who in the mid-1990s fronted an effort to build an NFL stadium at Hollywood Park.

“You always want one guy on the outside and you use him,” said former Fox Sports President Ed Goren. “It’s just good business.”

It’s happening again, of course, with the recently floated suggestion that the St. Louis Rams might move to a new stadium at Hollywood Park. For the properly pessimistic take on all this, I recommend reading Michael Hiltzik here. I find it comforting that no matter how skeptical I am about the NFL and Los Angeles, there’s always at least one person who’s even more cynical on the subject than me.

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Los Angeles Prepares To Be Played Yet Again By the NFL

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LA’s Eric Garcetti, Mayor of Instagram

by gr8stacntnt-1957 Posted on December 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is a busy guy. But even the mayor of America’s second-largest city—and potential Senate candidate—is not immune to the relaxing, time-wasting powers of social media: he’s a prolific Instagrammer.

Unlike the social media accounts of most politicians, Garcetti’s Instagram clearly belongs to a real human being—one with a hobby interest in photography. Compare that to the Instagram of New York City’s Bill de Blasio, whose feed is clogged with press conferences—no filters to be found. No wonder, then, that Garcetti boasts nearly 12,000 followers, easily topping de Blasio’s 7,800. With artsy shots like these, it’s not hard to see why:

A photo posted by Eric Garcetti (@ericgarcetti) on Dec 12, 2014 at 6:24am PST

A photo posted by Eric Garcetti (@ericgarcetti) on Oct 10, 2014 at 10:38pm PDT

Really, though. This is just great composition:

A photo posted by Eric Garcetti (@ericgarcetti) on Aug 8, 2014 at 9:56pm PDT

Beyond showcasing his artistic eye, Garcetti’s not afraid to broadcast himself hobnobbing in Hollywood:

#MerryGrinchmas #HappyWhoYear #MayorAugustusMaywho

A photo posted by Eric Garcetti (@ericgarcetti) on Dec 12, 2014 at 5:47pm PST

Like many LA residents, he admires an appealing coffee menu:

@primerataza great stop during @ciclavia

A photo posted by Eric Garcetti (@ericgarcetti) on Oct 10, 2014 at 1:25pm PDT

He can’t resist the appeal of a photogenic dog. (The dog in question belongs to California Governor Jerry Brown.)

California’s First Dog, @SutterBrown

A photo posted by Eric Garcetti (@ericgarcetti) on Jun 6, 2014 at 12:59pm PDT

He puts his frequent helicopter and plane rides to good use:

A photo posted by Eric Garcetti (@ericgarcetti) on Nov 11, 2014 at 12:03pm PST

A photo posted by Eric Garcetti (@ericgarcetti) on Nov 11, 2014 at 7:48pm PST

Dude knows how to use some borders.

A photo posted by Eric Garcetti (@ericgarcetti) on Jun 6, 2014 at 3:28pm PDT

While some take to Garcetti’s posts to complain (mostly about helicopter use), the comments on his posts are overwhelmingly positive. Representing most, one user wrote, “Mr. Mayor, I’ve been increasingly surprised by your photographic eye. You have a great perspective for light and color. Respect.” Respect, indeed.

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LA’s Eric Garcetti, Mayor of Instagram

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Here’s What Happens to Police Officers Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men

by CaridadSleeman Posted on August 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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In the week since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, initial autopsy findings, police reports, and eyewitness accounts have begun to provide some insights into the circumstances of his death. But plenty of questions remain unanswered, not the least of them: Where is Officer Darren Wilson, and what’s likely to happen to him?

Wilson, who was put on administrative leave after killing Brown, reportedly left home with his family a few days before his name was made public. A fundraising campaign launched on August 17 has already raised more than $10,000 to cover the financial needs of Wilson’s family, “including legal fees.” (The campaign has since increased its goal to $100,000.)

It remains to be seen whether Wilson will face criminal charges, but a limited review of similar killings by police suggests that the officers more often than not walk away without an indictment, and are very rarely convicted. Delores Jones-Brown, a law professor and director of the Center on Race, Crime, and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, looked at 21 publicized cases from 1994 through 2009 in which a police officer killed an unarmed black person. Of those, only seven cases resulted in an indictment—for criminally negligent homicide, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, or violation of civil rights—and only three officers were found guilty.

Let’s take a closer look at five specific cases in which an unarmed black man was killed by officers while allegedly fleeing or resisting in some fashion.

City: Memphis, Tennessee
Date: October 1974
Officers: Elton Hymon and Leslie Wright
Victim: Edward Garner
What happened: Officers Hymon and Wright were responding to a burglary call when Hymon spotted Garner, an unarmed 15-year-old, by a fence in the backyard of the home in question. After Hymon ordered Garner to halt, the teenager tried to climb the fence. In response, the officer shot him fatally in the head. A federal district court ruled that the shooting was justified under a Tennessee statute—the law said that once a police officer voices intent to arrest a suspect, “the officer may use all the necessary means to effect the arrest.” Garner’s father appealed, and the case ended up in the Supreme Court, which ruled the Tennessee statute unconstitutional and the killing unjustified. Justice Byron White wrote for the majority: “It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape. Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so. It is no doubt unfortunate when a suspect who is in sight escapes, but the fact that the police arrive a little late or are a little slower afoot does not always justify killing the suspect. A police officer may not seize an unarmed, non-dangerous suspect by shooting him dead.” Despite the reversal, the officer who shot Hymon was never charged.

Iris and Ramon Baez, parents of Anthony Baez, address the media after the sentencing of former police officer Frank Livoti Lynsey Addario/AP

City: Bronx, New York
Date: December 1994
Officer: Francis X. Livoti
Victim: Anthony Baez
What happened: Officer Livoti choked to death 29-year-old Anthony Baez in a case that would later be featured in a PBS documentary titled Every Mother’s Son. After their football struck his patrol car, Livoti had ordered Baez and his brother to leave the area. When the brothers refused, Livoti attempted an arrest. After Baez allegedly resisted, the officer administered the choke hold that ended his life. Livoti, who had been accused of brutality 11 times over 11 years, was charged with criminally negligent homicide, but found not guilty during a state trial in October 1996. He was fired the following year, however, after a judge ruled his choke hold illegal. In June 1998, a federal jury sentenced him to 7.5 years in prison for violating Baez’s civil rights, and the Baez family received a $3 million settlement from the city later that year. In 2003, two more cops were fired for giving false testimony in Livoti’s defense.

Officers Richard Murphy, left, Kenneth Boss, center, and Edward McMellon listen to their attorneys speak to the media, Mar. 31, 1999. David Karp/AP

City: Bronx, New York
Date: February 1999
Officers: Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon, Kenneth Boss, Richard Murphy
Victim: Amadou Diallo
What happened: Amadou Diallo, an unarmed, 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea, was killed in the vestibule of his own building when four white police officers fired 41 shots, striking him 19 times. Diallo had just returned home from his job as a street vendor at 12:44 a.m. when he was confronted by the plainclothes officers. The officers later said he matched the description of a rape suspect, and that they mistakenly believed he was reaching for a gun. (He was pulling out his wallet.) Three of the officers had been involved in previous shootings, including one that led to the death of another black civilian in 1997. The four cops were acquitted of all charges, prompting citywide protests. They were not fired, either, but lost permission to carry a weapon—although one of the officers eventually had his carrying privilege restored. In 2004, Diallo’s family received a $3 million settlement from the city. His mother said her son had been saving to attend college and become a computer programmer. A foundation in Diallo’s name seeks to promote racial healing.

A candlelit vigil for Anthony Dwain Lee in front of the West Los Angeles police station, Oct 30, 2000 Kim D. Johnson/AP

City: Los Angeles, California
Date: October 2000
Officer: Tarriel Hopper
Victim: Anthony Dwain Lee
What happened: Lee, a 39-year-old black actor who had roles in the 1997 movie Liar Liar and the TV series ER, was attending a Halloween party when the LAPD showed up, responding to a noise complaint. According to police accounts, a group of officers were searching for the party’s host when they found Lee and two other men in a small room, engaged in what the police claimed looked like a drug deal. Lee, who was dressed as a devil, allegedly held up a toy pistol, whereupon Officer Hopper fired several times, wounding him fatally. The LAPD’s internal review board determined that the shooting was justified because Hopper had believed Lee’s pistol was real and feared for his life.

Johannes Mehserle, left, talks with his attorney Christopher Miller, Jan. 14, 2009. Cathleen Allison/AP

City: Oakland, California
Date: January 2009
Officer: Johannes Mehserle
Victim: Oscar Grant
What happened: Early on New Year’s Day, BART transit officers responding to reports of fighting on a train detained Oscar Grant, 22, and several other men on the platform at Fruitvale Station. In an incident captured on cell phone cameras, Officer Mehserle pulled out his gun and fatally shot Grant, who was face down on the platform at the time. Mehserle later testified that he thought he was reaching for his Taser while trying to put handcuffs on Grant, who resisted. A jury found Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced him to two years in jail. He was released after serving 11 months at the Los Angeles County Jail. The episode was turned into the acclaimed 2013 feature film, Fruitvale Station.

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Here’s What Happens to Police Officers Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men

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WATCH: The NRA Recently Held Its Annual Meeting, And It Was Just as You’d Expect Fiore Cartoon

by ConsuelOmar Posted on May 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

More here – 

WATCH: The NRA Recently Held Its Annual Meeting, And It Was Just as You’d Expect Fiore Cartoon

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