Almost 60 percent of food-service workers are classified as low wage, the highest percentage in any industry. A report by the Institute for Policy Studies released in April—“Restaurant Industry Pay: Taxpayers’ Double Burden”—examines the winners and losers in an industry as American as the Big Mac. Workers, unsurprisingly, don’t fare well. Big corporate restaurant […]

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  The National Restaurant Association wrapped up its annual lobby days in Washington at the end of April. Called “the other NRA,” the corporate lobby’s top priority is to prevent an increase in the minimum wage. Congress is expected to vote on a bill to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 some […]

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(Photo Source: AJAM) It’s sounding again like the drought of 1976-77: “Shower with a friend.” “Put a brick in your toilet tank.” “Fix your leaky faucet.” “Replace your lawn with a cactus garden.” And then the pictures: denuded ski slopes, boat docks resting on the bottom of empty reservoirs, dry brown furrows stretching to the […]

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  Let us pause now to pay our respects to Bunny Mellon. She died in mid-March on her Virginia horse-country estate. But no tears, please. Bunny — nobody called her by her given name Rachel — lived a long and rich life. Very long. Very rich. One hundred and three at her death, Bunny Mellon […]

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  No matter how hard lawmakers try to close their eyes, click their heels, and hope for the best, they can’t make highway funding magically appear. But that doesn’t stop them fiddling and flailing as they burn through the Highway Trust Fund. The Highway Trust Fund was created in 1956 to provide the nation’s surface transportation system with a […]

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