Tag Archives: atlantic

There’s too much garbage for just two garbage patches

by graptorm Posted on January 18, 2013

There’s too much garbage for just two garbage patches

By Susie Cagle

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and North Atlantic Garbage Patch have some new competition from the south, where scientists have discovered evidence of a new floating garbage island off the coast of Chile.

Scientists at the 5 Gyres Institute – which tracks plastic pollution in all five swirling subtropical gyres — discovered this mass of plastic by looking at ocean currents. This patch has accumulated in the South Pacific subtropical gyre, right around Easter Island. It’s the first documentation of a trash patch in the Southern Hemisphere.

This video shows the projected spread of plastic pollution over the next 10 years:

“To create a solution to an ecosystem-wide problem we must understand the scope and magnitude of that problem,” said 5 Gyres Executive Director Marcus Eriksen. “It’s our mission to be on the frontlines of that understanding, and to continue monitoring the most remote regions of the world’s oceans.”

As we find out just how far our plastics have traveled, we’re also finding out just how much damage they’re doing. A new study shows that the most commonly produced plastics are also the ones that soak up the most other toxins when they’re floating around in our oceans for, well, ever — at least until they get gobbled up.

Midway Film Project

This year the 5 Gyres Institute will launch expeditions to the North Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and Great Lakes, on the hunt for more garbage patches.

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More than half the U.S. is still in drought, and it’s likely to last through April

by RubinkJoseph Posted on January 18, 2013

More than half the U.S. is still in drought, and it’s likely to last through April

By Philip Bump

Do you know where the largest desert in the world is? Go ahead, Google it. I’ll wait. The correct answer: the Antarctic. Even though it is cold and covered with snow, it receives very, very small amounts of precipitation. The more you know, etc.

I bring this up to demonstrate that appearances can be deceiving. Right now, for example, it is winter. And despite that, and despite the fact that the United States saw a decent amount of precipitation last week, much of the country is still under drought conditions — nearly 59 percent of the lower 48 states, in fact.

DroughtMonitor

And that is likely to continue. From Climate Central:

The national drought footprint shrank slightly this week, as heavy rains fell across the South, Southeast, Midwest and parts of the Mid-Atlantic states, and major snowfall blanketed parts of the Rocky Mountains and Northern Cascades, bringing relief to those regions. However, the hardest-hit drought region — the Great Plains — continued to experience drier-than-average conditions, with the drought continuing to hold on.

A new federal drought outlook issued on Thursday projects that the drought conditions are likely to remain entrenched through April, and that the drought may even worsen from the Plains to the Rockies and into the Southwest, along with another area of persistent and expanding drought in the Southeast, including southern Georgia and the Florida Panhandle.

Here’s what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration thinks that persistence will look like by May.

DroughtMonitor

Even in winter, the ripple effects of the drought continue. Over the past 25 years, budget cuts have meant that the Army Corps of Engineers only fully dredged the Great Lakes six times. Without dredging properly, sediment builds up in shipping lanes. Making matters worse, the drought is causing water levels to drop. That combination of higher lake floors and less water is forcing ports along the lakes to close.

The 2012 drought was, by many measures, the worst since the Dust Bowl era. It’s not over yet. Just as a little cool weather doesn’t undermine the concept of global warming, a little precipitation doesn’t end a drought. And sometimes deserts are frozen solid.

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House Republican politicking is obviously more fun than supporting Sandy victims

by biglermyrta910 Posted on January 11, 2013

House Republican politicking is obviously more fun than supporting Sandy victims

By Philip Bump

According to House Speaker John Boehner’s master plan, the House will next week consider the other $51 billion in Sandy relief funding that it punted on earlier this month.

House Republicans will absolutely not approve all of it. The question is how much they’ll sign off on. With a coda for pessimists: if any.

drpavloff

Advertising distribution mechanism Politico.com outlines how the vote is expected to go.

First, the House plans to call up a bill by Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) that totals $27 billion in relief. Then, it will immediately amend the bill to deduct the $9.7 billion in flood relief passed before Congress recessed — bringing the bill’s total to $17 billion.

Amendments will be allowed — including spending reduction amendments — and then the House will vote on passage of the Rogers amendment. This would set up $17 billion to be sent to the Senate.

But then leadership will allow Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) to offer an amendment that offers an additional $33 billion. Republicans think this can pass as well.

But efforts by Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), who abstained from voting for John Boehner for speaker, could change the equation.

The South Carolinian has already offered multiple amendments seeking spending offsets, which if made in order could seriously complicate the pledge of Majority Leader Eric Cantor to move the legislation quickly.

Smart precedent by a representative of a state whose most tourist-friendly city lies right on the Atlantic Ocean.

House Republicans are particularly concerned about measures in the package that don’t go directly to providing aid to the affected and displaced. Among those measures are ones meant to ameliorate future storms: to improve prediction ability, to bolster federal facilities, to encourage smarter reconstruction in affected areas. Given that Republican members of the House are far more interested in symbolic penny-pinching (particularly when it can screw over East Coast libruls), much of that will likely end up on the House floor. So to speak.

It’s been noted with some regularity that an aid package of $60 billion was authorized by Congress 10 days after Hurricane Katrina. Superstorm Sandy was 75 days ago. Meaning that private relief services have dried to a trickle while public ones are increasingly strained. For example, housing aid, as reported by the Huffington Post:

Nearly 1,000 Long Island households displaced by superstorm Sandy are waiting to find out whether their federal funding for hotel rooms will be extended beyond Sunday.

That’s the current “checkout date” for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s transitional sheltering assistance program, a spokesman for the agency said. However, the spokesman, John Mills, said Thursday that a decision about whether to extend the program could be made by the end of the day Friday.

Roughly 970 Long Island households — individuals or entire families — are staying in hotel rooms funded by the program, Mills said. Statewide, the program currently funds hotel rooms for about 2,360 households, he said.

There are two bright spots in this story. The first is that the “checkout” date has already been extended twice. The second is that FEMA is the only federal agency to have received aid from the Sandy bill the House passed last week — but just enough to keep it solvent.

Nonetheless, the checkout-date dilemma highlights the larger problem. The Sandy hourglass is down to its last few grains. More and more of the families that have spent nearly 11 weeks patching their lives back together will be unable to do so without help. Support is needed. Has been needed. And with each day that passes, we are 24 hours closer to another hurricane season for which the East Coast is only more vulnerable than before.

Update: FEMA extended the residency deadline until January 26.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Happy 25th anniversary, San Jose’s useless light rail!

by donnajansen Posted on January 11, 2013

Happy 25th anniversary, San Jose’s useless light rail!

By Philip Bump

For part of the time that I lived in San Jose, Calif., my apartment was downtown, across the street from a light rail station. I used to take the train to work, which was great for the first 80 percent of the ride: The car was almost always near-empty as it chugged along down the middle of streets, passing dozens of automobiles at each stop light. When I reached the stop closest to my office, I’d get off — and start the 20-minute walk in, having to either walk well out of my way or, if I was in a hurry, dash across a busy highway with no crosswalk. It was an hour’s journey, easily, for a trip that took 10 minutes by car without traffic.

My friend Michael and I took to calling the light rail “the Buzz,” both because it sounded confusingly like “the bus,” which amused us, and because it implied a speedy, futuristic system, which the light rail very much is not. A guy I knew who worked with the union that represented bus and light rail operators called it the “ghost train,” since you’d often see it passing by at night, lit up and empty.

pbumpSprawl in Silicon Valley.

The Atlantic Cities’ Eric Jaffe has a good look at the light rail as it celebrates its 25th anniversary. From his article:

Less than 1 percent of Santa Clara County residents ride [Valley Transportation Authority] light rail; the per-passenger round-trip operating cost is $11.74 and taxpayers subsidize 85 percent of costs — third and second worst in the country, respectively. There are problems with measuring costs per passenger mile on light rail, but ouch. …

In November, [the Mercury News‘ Mike] Rosenberg reported that a VTA plan to extend a light rail line 1.6 miles to Los Gatos, home of Netflix, will cost $175 million while drawing only about 200 new riders. Back in May, a local news station found a culture of fare evasion on VTA that gives the system a rate of 7.2 percent — highest in the region.

Jaffe has a series of quotes from people nearly as dismissive of the light rail as I am above. But one word is curiously missing: density. The problem with the light rail is that it serves a county that is home to one of the least-dense cities in America; San Jose, the nation’s 10th largest city, is not in the top 125 in people per square mile. Offices and strip malls and housing complexes are scattered around the valley floor, the result of City Manager Dutch Hamann‘s ’50s-era small-town-incorporation spree. San Jose contains land extending far beyond what even its now 1 million residents have use for, making a skeletal light rail system like platform sidewalks in a massive bog — barely providing access to anything.

I tried to be a good resident. I tried to give the light rail my business in part because I liked the aesthetic of it. Step out of my apartment and hop the train to work. It’s what I’d do now in hyper-dense Manhattan, if I didn’t work from home. But in San Jose, it didn’t work.

So I did what everyone else does. I got a car.

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Silicon Valley Can’t Get Transit Right, The Atlantic Cities

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Leaked, useless report suggests fracking is fine for New Yorkers

by biglermyrta910 Posted on January 3, 2013

Leaked, useless report suggests fracking is fine for New Yorkers

By Philip Bump

The New York Times got its ink-stained hands on a report from the New York Health Department assessing the risks associated with fracking, the primary issue at play as the state considers whether or not to lift a ban on the practice. While the report suggests that fracking doesn’t pose risks, there are at least two gigantic caveats. From the Times:

The state’s Health Department found in an analysis it prepared early last year that the much-debated drilling technology known as hydrofracking could be conducted safely in New York, according to a copy obtained by The New York Times from an expert who did not believe it should be kept secret. …

The eight-page analysis is a summary of previous research by the state and others, and concludes that fracking can be done safely. It delves into the potential impact of fracking on water resources, on naturally occurring radiological material found in the ground, on air emissions and on “potential socioeconomic and quality-of-life impacts.” …

Emily DeSantis, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Environmental Conservation, said the analysis obtained by The Times was out of date. “The document you have is merely a summary, is nearly a year old, and there will be substantial changes to that version,” she said.

Can you spot the caveats? Yes, the report is an aggregation of existing research, not new reporting on any health effects. And, yes, it’s outdated.

Lazzarello

Last November, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed out a deadline for making a final decision so that the state could do more research on fracking’s health effects. The release of this report makes clear why that was a natural next step: With only a cobbled-together set of data on how the practice could affect New Yorkers, it would be hard for Cuomo to make a strong case for lifting a ban. An upstate political blog spoke with a Sierra Club representative following release of the report.

“The position that the impacts of fracking can be regulated to ‘below levels of significant health concern’ is pure fantasy and it is understandable why (Gov. Andrew Cuomo) did not press forward with these baseless conclusions last year,” said Roger Downs, conservation director of the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter.

The Times didn’t include the report in its coverage, but the site Journalist’s Resource has a good overview of existing research and reporting on the topic. Among the reports included there is one from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which looks specifically at shale fracking in New York and Pennsylvania.

In aquifers overlying the Marcellus and Utica shale formations of northeastern Pennsylvania and upstate New York, we document systematic evidence for methane contamination of drinking water associated with shalegas extraction. In active gas-extraction areas (one or more gas wells within 1 km), average and maximum methane concentrations in drinking-water wells increased with proximity to the nearest gas well and were 19.2 and 64 mg CH4 L −1 (n ¼ 26), a potential explosion hazard; in contrast, dissolved methane samples in neighboring nonextraction sites (no gas wells within 1 km) within similar geologic formations and hydrogeologic regimes averaged only 1.1 mg L −1 (P < 0.05; n ¼ 34).

Emphasis added, to highlight the health risk. The area in New York considered in that research lies on the state’s southern border — the area most likely to see approval of the fracking process.

New York isn’t alone in its skepticism. Large cities across the country are beginning to ban the practice within city limits.

Some cities, even those in the heart of oil and gas country have moved to ban fracking within their limits. Tulsa, Oklahoma, (once the self-proclaimed oil capital of the world) has completely banned fracking within the city limits. Planning for the first ever natural gas well in the city of Dallas was blocked last week, and the town of Longmont, near Denver, is currently battling attempts to overturn its own fracking ban.

Meaning that even if Cuomo feels comfortable in lifting the state’s ban once a more thorough health assessment has been completed, the odds that we see fracking wells in Central Park remain pretty slim.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Avis buys Zipcar, delighting investors and unnerving customers

by Myrna Posted on January 2, 2013

Avis buys Zipcar, delighting investors and unnerving customers

By Susie Cagle

In 2011, Zipcar, the world’s largest car-sharing company, was valued at $1.2 billion, but it sold today to Avis for just shy of $500 million. If Zipcar’s shareholders approve the sale, it will likely become final in a few months.

“By combining with Zipcar, we will significantly increase our growth potential, both in the United States and internationally, and will position our company to better serve a greater variety of consumer and commercial transportation needs,” Avis Chair and CEO Ronald Nelson said in a statement.

Given the clear downward trend in American car owning and driving, it was only a matter of time until a big corporation got in the sharing game, and the easiest way to do that is always to eat one of the little guys and absorb its start-up life force. According to Nelson, the deal will mean more cars for Zipcar, especially on weekends when most of Avis’ fleet is sitting in parking lots. While Avis’ rivals Hertz and Enterprise started offering hourly rentals, Avis never did, so the acquisition presents a real expansion of services for the old-timey rental dealership.

It’s certainly got investors feeling good — Zipcar’s shares jumped more than 48 percent this morning on news of the deal.

But what about the people who actually use the car-sharing service? There are about 760,000 of them in the U.S. The Atlantic Cities considers other cases of corporations acquiring startups and wonders whether Avis will ruin Zipcar:

In some of these cases that means the end of a beloved service as we knew it. Other acquisitions have allowed the disruptor to flourish — under the thumb and bureaucracy of its new owner, but still. And sometimes even that part doesn’t go well, as we saw with HP’s acquisition of Autonomy, which not only wiped out HP’s profits but led to the unraveling of Autonomy, too. Even in that best case scenario, we have to consider all the possibilities that weren’t. What could the competition between the two companies have led to? We’ll never know. But we will have more than that sub-compact available for a weekend road trip.

So what if the sun does set on Zipcar? In recent years, car-on-demand services have become kind of standard — as mentioned above, Hertz and Enterprise are already offering hourly rentals. Most recently, Zipcar’s style of service has been eclipsed in excitement (if not yet in membership) by ride-on-demand services such as Sidecar and Lyft, which work more like taxis than car rentals, and by newer services like car2go, which don’t require reservations. And if Americans continue to lose interest not just in owning cars but in driving altogether, that would be good news for new ride-sharing services and the planet, but not so great for Avis and that $500 million.

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Holiday shopping is down, mall blight is up

by olikellopas Posted on December 28, 2012

Holiday shopping is down, mall blight is up

By Susie Cagle

It seems a lot of Americans shifted the gift this holiday season. Early reports from retailers indicate this may well be the least shop-happy winter since the apocalyptic recession Christmas of 2008. And climate change sure isn’t helping.

Sean_Marshall

Reuters reports:

Shares of retailers dropped sharply on Wednesday, helping drag broader indexes lower, as investors realized they were likely to be disappointed when companies start to report results in a few weeks’ time.

“The broad brush was Christmas wasn’t all that merry for retailers, and you have to ask what those margins look like if the top line didn’t meet their expectations,” said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group.

Growth was always expected to slow this season, though an improving employment picture and rising home values had helped mitigate the worst fears. But then Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast in late October, mild weather blunted sales of winter clothing and rising concern about the “fiscal cliff” became more of a reality, dragging down already-pessimistic forecasts.

(T-minus how long until someone rebrands swimsuits as a great climate collapse fashion choice?)

Stores stand to scoop up nearly a third of their annual sales over the holiday season, so this drop could be significant — but could it be enough to push us closer to a more lasting shifting of the gifts?

Sales may be down on the whole, but they’re also moving from the brick and mortar world to the digital, leaving us with empty, useless retail spaces and dead, blighted malls from coast to coast. According to Atlantic Cities, shopping mall vacancy rates are now hovering around twice what they were 10 years ago. The head of a leading commercial real estate firm said of these ghost malls, “I don’t think we’re overbuilt, I think we’re under-demolished.”

But we shouldn’t be knocking these places down! We should save the energy and resources that would otherwise be needed to demolish and rebuild, and instead creatively reuse retail space for community centers and social services. But not for shark aquariums though, please. Please.

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What the fiscal cliff would mean for our cities and food

by Myrna Posted on December 22, 2012

What the fiscal cliff would mean for our cities and food

By Susie Cagle

Over the last several weeks of fiscal-cliff frenzy, we’ve heard a lot about taxes, taxes, taxes. It’s apocalypse now-ish! With only 10 days left before we go careening off that cliff, President Obama and congressional leaders are trying (so they say!) to stop the crazy train that they set rolling in the first place.

Atlantic Cities warns of the horrors awaiting us in the ravine below: big cuts for transportation and urban infrastructure, from housing to roads. The Section 8 low-income housing program and Community Services Block Grants could be slashed, as well as assistance for the homeless, which would mean hard times for the poor plus local layoffs.

The thing that makes all of this so troubling is that direct federal funds make up only a fraction of a city’s budget. Much more money comes from state governments. Maryland, for example, stands to lose $100 million if the government goes over the fiscal cliff.

And without clarity on just how the federal government will try to plug up its debt, states are struggling to create a road map for their own infrastructure efforts.

Even if the fiscal cliff doesn’t come to pass, all this uncertainty will likely have a long-term impact. “Cities and metros are getting the picture that the federal government is not a reliable partner,” says Bruce Katz, vice president at the Brookings Institution and founding Director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program.

Today the National League of Cities released a statement saying, “Local elected officials have been at turns appalled, stunned, and dismayed, at what is passing for ‘serious debate and negotiation’” around the fiscal cliff.

Meanwhile, leaders from states that stand to benefit from a new Farm Bill are urging Congress to summarily lump it into the last-minute budget agreement. That would affect food stamps, big ag subsidies, and a lot more. The Atlantic details some of the less-discussed risks of a last-minute Farm Bill:

Attached to the House Agriculture Committee’s draft bill, for example, are a handful of riders that should sound alarm bells for anyone who cares about healthy food. A series of amendments were approved by the committee and included in its bill to strengthen the already enormous powers that the industrial agriculture complex wields over the food system.

Those amendments include restrictions on states’ abilities to regulate agriculture, such as in animal-welfare initiatives; weakened pesticide regulation; weakened anti-monopoly regulation; and fast-tracking USDA approval for genetically modified crops.

Bonus: The current Farm Bill also includes $6 billion in cuts to conservation programs. From the Environmental Working Group:

Industrial agriculture — not manufacturing, gas drilling or mining — is the largest contributor to America’s water pollution problem. And despite the high cost to taxpayers and businesses, most farm operations are exempt from the federal Clean Water Act. State governments, meanwhile, have little authority to compel farmers to control soil, pesticides and chemical fertilizers that flow off their fields and into water supplies. This leaves the farm bill’s current conservation programs — the ones slated for deep cuts — as the only line of defense.

Land protected under conservation programs is also particularly effective at fighting climate change because it keeps large amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere. The carbon that would be released as a result of the likely conservation cuts in a fiscal cliff cum secret farm bill could equal the annual emissions of two million passenger vehicles.

To make things worse, the centerpiece of such a bill would almost surely be lavish new subsidies for bloated crop insurance policies, which already allow some farmers to turn a profit by plowing up and cultivating poor and environmentally sensitive land on an industrial scale, pumping still more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Super double-point bonus: The bill’s cuts to the already arguably underfunded Food and Drug Administration could also jeopardize food safety. Food Safety News reports:

“The Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, which has a central role in implementing the Food Safety Modernization Act, has had the same permanent [full-time equivalent] staffing level as it did in 1992, before the explosion of imports, before the overall growth in the complexity and size that we see in the food system, even before FSMA was enacted,” [FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods Michael Taylor] said. “We need to beef up the staffing at CFSAN and other parts of the program, so anything that forces us backward — you can just imagine the effect that it would have.”

Also, if we do careen off the cliff and into the Farm Bill ravine, milk prices could double (not that you need milk anyway).

So with 10 days left, what are you hoping for from Fiscal Cliffsmas: Five golden rings to help fund low-income housing, or maybe just a partridge in an organic, pesticide-free pear tree?

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San Francisco’s private-public spaces go public-public

by RubinkJoseph Posted on December 18, 2012

San Francisco’s private-public spaces go public-public

By Susie Cagle

It may be one of the most expensive places to live in the country, but San Francisco is still sticking to its hippie roots and trying to look out for its commoners. A city mandate requires that downtown developers include a space in every new building for the city’s scruffy thousands who can’t afford Financial District condos. Some of these privately owned public spaces, or POPOS, look especially nice and fancy. Some have weird but glorious monster head sculptures. All languish relatively unused — but that may be about to change.

Scott Beale

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The provision of privately owned public open spaces is governed by the city’s 1985 downtown plan. The formula “to meet the needs of downtown workers, residents and visitors” requires 1 square foot of public space per 50 square feet of office space or hotels.

At least 15 such spaces have been created since then because of the program. In addition, at least two recent projects not covered by the downtown plan include distinctive publicly accessible spaces: the San Francisco Federal Building with its three-story “sky garden” cut into the 18-story tower, and an expansive landscaped passage between the clover-shaped towers of the Infinity condominium complex. …

The 1985 plan states that when public spaces are located within or on top of buildings, “their availability should be marked visibly at street level.” But because the guidelines are so vague, it’s easy to fulfill their letter but not their spirit.

C’mon: If you were a downtown developer, would you want the street rabble accessing your luxury loft building’s glorious roof garden, even though the city requires it? Hell no. They must build it, but they can make it very difficult for you to come. ”Stay in the streets, plebes!” the developers cry as they ash their cigars off the 101st floor.

But not anymore! An update to the city’s ordinance now requires much clearer signage for the public benefit. From Atlantic Cities:

“It should create a branding to get to the question, ‘does the public understand what these spaces are?” [city manager of legislative affairs AnMarie] Rodgers says. “It should really help people to see it as not just one space, but a network of downtown open spaces.”

A new online tool maps all the POPOS and lets you sort by open hours, food availability, and public restrooms. Many have seating and views of the city, and some even have power outlets for your new pop-up flash-mob coworking space.

Can you imagine if all cities did this? We’d have public bathroom maps for every downtown!

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Super-rare fast-food worker strike hits NYC

by Myrna Posted on November 29, 2012

Super-rare fast-food worker strike hits NYC

By Susie Cagle

Would you like to fry up pink slime all day, and still be on food stamps? Well, you’re not alone. (Shocking, right?)

New York City food service workers at some of the nation’s biggest, baddest chains walked off the job this morning for a super-rare one-day strike against low wages.

Workers are organizing around the Fast Food Forward campaign at dozens of McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Domino’s, and Papa John’s locations city-wide, in an industry that has traditionally been devoid of if not outright hostile to union power. As Josh Eidelson at Salon reports, one 79-year-old McDonald’s worker has already been suspended this week for signing up coworkers to the campaign’s petition. From Salon:

New York Communities for Change organizing director Jonathan Westin told Salon the current effort is “the biggest organizing campaign that’s happened in the fast food industry.” A team of 40 NYCC organizers have been meeting with workers for months, spearheading efforts to form a new union, the Fast Food Workers Committee. NYCC organizers and fast food workers have been signing up employees on petitions demanding both the chance to organize a union without retaliation and a hefty raise, from near-minimum wages to $15 an hour.

Striking workers detailed strict working conditions and verbal abuse while on the job. Their current wages — $8.90/hour median in New York City, where the $7.25/hour federal minimum reigns supreme — don’t reflect the economic realities of the booming U.S. fast-food industry. Apparently recession America has a taste for Happy Meals.

From Sarah Jaffe at The Atlantic:

Fast food weathered the recession, and the biggest names are seeing big profits. Yum! Brands, which runs Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC, saw profits up 45 percent over the last four fiscal years, and McDonald’s saw them up 130 percent. (After Walmart, Yum! Brands and McDonald’s are the second and third-largest low-wage employers in the nation.)

Raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.80 per hour would likely have a tiny effect on how much consumers pay for food, but it could cut deep into those corporate profits.

Fast-food workers are not just cooking and serving the pink slime to you — they have essentially become it, squeezed for profit through Yum! and McDonald’s capital meat grinders.

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