Food Fight! Can I have fries with that?

Tomorrow, the Board of Supervisors will be hearing an appeal on whether or not to stand by the Planning Commission's decision that disallows the drive through portion of the proposed McDonald's.  McDonald's says that's a deal breaker -- no drive through, no deal.  There's a whole lot of people weighing in on this, a petition has been passing around, there's a webpage with instructions of who and where to write,  http://www.nomcdonaldslososos.org  That page includes a link to a No Mc Los Osos Facebook page where you can leave comments.   Check it out and tomorrow we'll find out if we'll get fries with that.  Or not. 

Dog Park Party

Saturday, it was fund-raising, garage-sale day for El Chorro Dog Park.  This has been an annual fund-raiser for the park for several years now and is part of the city-wide Garage Sale Day.  El Chorro (located across from Cuesta College on Hwy 1) is maintained by volunteers so every penny of the sale went to the park. The town was packed and there were lots of treasures to be found.  Weather perfect, people out having a good time.

If you've got a dog and are a regular El Chorro visitor and want to get involved in supporting the park by volunteering, there's contact information posted on the kiosk at the park.  

Lovin' It Yet?

Minimum wage workers at various McDonald's are staging a protest over their crappy minimum wage which keeps them working full time but getting poverty wages.  Conservatives claim that McJobs like those at McDonald's are held by teenagers.  Liberals point out that the average worker is 29 years old, likely married and even working full time is still at the poverty level for a family of four. 

McDonald's had a profit somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 billion last year, so it's certainly clear that they COULD raise wages for their workers, if they weren't so greedy. But since they are so greedy, like most of their corporate brethren, to get workers a pay hike, they claim they'd have to charge more for their crappy, artery-clogging, diabetes-causing McFood, (since the CEO's couldn't possibly take so much as one penny less of their gazillion dollar salaries and perks) .  So over at The Daily Beast, there's a McPoverty Calculator. 
 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/01/the-mcpoverty-calculator.html

If you click on the link, you can plug in how much extra you'd pay for a Big Mac to get McDonald's workers a wage that had a shot of getting them closer to a living wage.  Go ahead.  Take the challenge.  It's a real shock to find out how little it takes to help someone else live a more decent life. (And, by the way, help the economy, since low-wage workers put that money immediately back into the economy, not into off-shore accounts.)

It's also a shock to find out that a Big Mac Costs $4.56.  Are you kidding me?  $4.56?