Regional Roundup: How ’bout them apples?
Photo: RandalWhitmore, Creative Commons, some rights reserved
This report on fast-food industry workers, published Tuesday by researchers from UC Berkeley and the University of Illinois, found that that “the cost of public assistance to families of workers in the fast-food industry is nearly $7 billion per year.” The Albany Times Union reports on what that means for New York:
“In its state-by-state breakdown, the report suggests that roughly 60 percent of New York’s 104,000 fast-food employees drew an average annual taxpayer cost of $708 million from programs such as food stamps and the Medicaid and CHIP health care safety nets in the period 2007-2012.
New York was second only to California in the size of taxpayer resources going to support low-wage fast food workers, the researchers concluded.”
Governor Cuomo has announced funding for communities affected by brownfields. Three of them are in the North Country: Lyons Falls will receive approximately half a million dollars to fix up 4 brownfield sites, including the abandoned mill downtown. Fort Edward will receive $254,250 to spur new investment in an industrial park on the Champlain Canal. And Glens Falls gets $124,000 to complete a revitalization plan for South Street.
Canadian Police and protesters, including some First Nations members, clash over hydraulic fracturing in New Brunswick.
Get out your mini tasting glasses and hit the road: It’s CiderWeekNY, where makers and tasters can wander the Hudson Valley and NYC in pursuit of Johnny Appleseed’s favorite libations. Of course, you’re likely to find the golden liquid closer to home, too. And Cuomo has signed legislation creating a new license for farm cideries. How ’bout them apples?
Stay tuned for these stories tomorrow on the Eight O’Clock Hour:
An investigation by NCPR has found tankers long deemed “inadequate” by federal safety regulators are carrying hazardous materials through many North Country towns. David Sommerstein reports the new information comes after a plan by CSX to increase the speed of its trains through Canton has raised new concerns about train safety.
Brian Mann reports on the fight over a natural gas pipeline that could help modernize IP’s paper mill in Ticonderoga and save the company tens of millions of dollars. The project would tap into a new gas line now being built in Vermont. But it faces fierce opposition from some environmentalists and from Vermonters who don’t want the pipeline on their land.
Montréal-based singer-songwriter Eliza Moore has a new album and she’ll give a concert in Canton on Saturday night. Her musical journey has taken her from Vermont to Indiana, Boston, the Thousand Islands and across Europe. We’ll talk with Eliza about her new EP, Everything to Me, and the classically-trained violinist’s personal journey.
John Warren has the latest outdoor conditions for the Adirondacks for the weekend.
So let’s analyze this. We(taxpayers) allow the business interests to talk us out raising the minimum wage in New York State. Then the underpaid fast food workers have to apply for various support services in order to eat and stay healthy. And then the State funds these programs at an ever increasing level. And then…as needed…they raise our taxes to cover the costs. If we cut out all of the annoying detail in those middle steps, and connect A to Z, it is quite easy to see that New York’s taxpayers are directly funding a very small group of millionaires and billionaires that run America’s fast food industry.
As taxpayers, we are constantly told that it’s the unions, or the insurers, or the pensions that are at fault, but we are blind and stupid if we believe that stuff.