Pandemic Investigation Finds Meat Industry Acted Like Common Scooby Doo Villain
As Wonkette's Evan Hurst noted at the time, Trump's HEREBY DECLARE was a hell of a departure from how Trump handled other aspects of the pandemic:
Trump has been reluctant to use actual powers he has, like invoking the Defense Production Act to make sure doctors have PPE and hospitals have ventilators, but he sure did invoke it to make sure America's delicious meats are able to make their full journey from the plant all the way into his Big Macs which go in his mouth. How can the White House chef burn him steaks and slather them with ketchup if the meat plants are closed? Clearly an untenable situation.
Well gosh, what a coincidence Donald Trump took such meaty action to protect the meat industry, which was worried about being sued by workers forced to process animal carcasses in close quarters, with little protective equipment. The report details that the executive order was actually proposed and drafted by lawyers at Tyson Foods, with input from other companies. (ProPublica broke that story in the fall of 2020, although we missed it at the time.) Tyson and industry lobbyists then shared the draft "with allied USDA officials who had previously helped them lobby or interfere with decision-making by other arms of federal and state government."
In the days leading up to President Trump’s issuance of the Executive Order, meatpacking industry representatives and companies—Smithfield and Tyson in particular—engaged in constant communications with Trump appointees at USDA, the National Economic Council, and the White House. [...] The eventual order adopted the themes and statutory directive laid out in Tyson’s draft, invoking the Defense Production Act to ensure meatpacking plants “continue operations.”
That was just how the Trump administration worked: Why bother regulating industries during a deadly pandemic when you can just let the industry tell you what it would like to do?
Not that the executive order was a complete freebie; the report also notes that the day after President Meat Sweats ordered more meat, the White House demanded tribute, requesting in an email to various meat trade groups that the companies “issue positive statements and social media about the President’s action on behalf of the industry, about the Order itself and about how it will help ensure the food supply chain remains strong.”
A flack at the "North American Meat Institute" obligingly sent back not only a press release, but a set of talking points the White House might use to thank the industry for thanking Trump.
The report concludes that the meatpacking companies
knew the risk posed by the coronavirus to their workers and knew it wasn’t a risk that the country needed them to take. They nonetheless lobbied aggressively—successfully enlisting USDA as a close collaborator in their efforts—to keep workers on the job in unsafe conditions, to ensure state and local health authorities were powerless to mandate otherwise, and to be protected against legal liability for the harms that would result.
As the Washington Post (free link) reports, the committee combed through a wealth of information, including
a review of 151,000 pages of documents, more than a dozen survey calls with industry union representatives, former Agriculture Department and Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials, and state and local health authorities. The subcommittee also held a staff briefing with OSHA and the USDA.
Some of the details are simply astonishing, like the quote from a meat industry lobbyist that graces the cover of the report, "Now to get rid of those pesky health departments!" Yes, someone said that in a real email, not in an episode of Scooby Doo.
That quote's from page three, in which the committee explained that well into the pandemic, the industry was still refusing to take science-based measures to keep workers from getting infected on the job.
For example, as late as May 22, 2020—well after the efficacy and necessity of coronavirus precautions such as testing, social distancing, and personal protective equipment were widely recognized—an executive at Koch Foods told a meatpacking industry lobbyist that temperature screening was “all we should be doing.” The lobbyist agreed, saying “Now to get rid of those pesky health departments!”
In a footnote, we find that's from an email by one Ashley Peterson, who was and is the "Senior Vice President of Scientific and Regulatory Affairs" for the "National Chicken Council." After all, a temperature check found one worker who was sick, the worker went home, and later tested positive, so clearly that was the only sick worker at that plant. (Also, no, temperature checks alone were never sufficient to safeguard against infections at work)
Dr. Peterson made another appearance later that summer, in a tweet from the National Chicken Council explaining that worker safety is job one, although oddly in the linked video she doesn't say anything about getting rid of those meddling kids in health departments. Hey, maybe she was just joking and pretending to sound like a cartoon villain! We left a message for Dr. Peterson at the Chicken Lobby seeking comment, and will update when / if we hear back from her.
In another fun incident, we learn that Foster Farms enlisted help from a Trump USDA appointee, Undersecretary of Ag Mindy Brashears, to prevent a local health department from ordering protections for workers. The chicken company, it turns out, had hidden death counts of workers in reports to the county as “resolved cases."
According to officials from this health department, during a call with Foster Farms and Brashears’ office, someone working for either Foster Farms or USDA callously referred to these death counts as “toe tag resolutions,” likely alluding to the toe tag that is often put on a corpse at the morgue.
Haha, it is to laugh.
Also too, the report notes that the meatpacking companies fairly regularly "lobbied the White House to make clear that—despite concerns by state and local health departments—meatpacking companies should not have to address coronavirus risks if it would impact productivity." Because heavens, you wouldn't want either a meat shortage or a loss in profitability, now would you? The lobbying was particularly intense in seeking protection from liability for workers getting sick, a matter of such importance to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that he fought tooth and nail to have it included in federal stimulus bills, even after Trump lost the 2020 election. Poor sad Mitch, it never did get passed.
In conclusion, this report makes clear that the meat industry and the Trump administration didn't give two good shits about worker safety, because there was a lot of money to be made. Besides, it wasn't like anyone important was dying — just low-income workers, many of them Latino, and as a Smithfield pork plant spokesperson memorably said, "Living circumstances in certain cultures are different than they are with your traditional American family," so probably the workers were getting sick at home and then tainting the company's immaculate slaughterhouse with filthy non-American virus.
At least the workers' health made for a fun betting pool among Tyson plant managers, allegedly.
See? We still can't get our heads around all that shit. It's infuriating, and nobody's going to go to jail.
[Washington Post (free link) / Special subcommittee report]
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Very Serious GOP Senators: January 6 Peaceful, Vigils At Justices' Homes The Real Insurrection
These images are the latest manifestation of just how extreme, just how radical, the Democratic Party is getting. [...] Today's Democrat Party believes in violence, they believe in mob rule, they believe in intimidation [...] These thugs have no business at the private homes of any government official, these Supreme Court justices or anyone else.
To emphasize the violent terrorism being perpetrated by the dangerous mob of crazed thugs, Fox showed video of people murderously walking in the streets and carrying signs in the most terrifying manner. Because it was raining during at least one march, several of the thugs carried open umbrellas, which might have been used as deadly weapons, and the fact that they weren't only proves what a close brush with death the justices escaped.
Cruz contrasted the slightly damp protesters outside the justices' homes with the good decent patriots of January 6, whom Cruz remembered not to call "terrorists" this time.
On January 6 of 2021, you had tens of thousands of people peacefully protesting, and yet the corporate media and Democrats slander them with the made-up term "insurrectionist." [...]
And yet in this instance, they are not willing to call off their goons even now, even now, as this has the potential to escalate and escalate further.
To the best of our knowledge, none of the protesters outside the SCOTUS justices' homes chanted for them to be hanged, broke through any windows, sprayed anyone with bear repellent, beat anyone with flagpoles, looted any offices, or injured more than 114 police officers, but that's probably because we're so biased we're just covering it up. MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan had no difficulty calling attention to the idiocy of the comparison, particularly given how consistently rightwing media has downplayed the actual deadly violence at the US Capitol.
Hasan also contrasted this week's nonviolent marches on public property to the long history of murder, assault, arson, and death threats against doctors, nurses, and clinics that provide abortion.
As for the claim that protesting on public property outside a judge's home is a federal crime, Republicans have been citing 18 U.S. Code § 1507, which reads,
Whoever, with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty, pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States, or in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer, or with such intent uses any sound-truck or similar device or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
Yr Doktor Zoom is not an attorney, so we ran that contention past Wonkette legal analyst Liz Dye, who is. Her considered legal opinion is "that's bullshit," and that "You got a right to be on the public street and express your opinion." In fact, she was quite certain that any attempt to invoke that law against protesters on public property would "never be upheld, not even by this SCOTUS."
That said, the Washington Post's Aaron Blake found some legal experts who thought the law might actually be valid. Blake notes that while the Supremes have "rarely dealt with this specific statute," they have upheld some similar laws. So we suppose that if any mass arrests of protesters do happen, we'll find out eventually. We'll just note that astute Wonkette legal analyst Jamie Lynn Crofts agrees with Liz that the federal statute is unenforceable, and also "that Post take is dumb."
We have to wonder: would justices whose homes were the site of protest have to recuse themselves? Haha, we amuse ourselves.
In any case, let's please not get too hung up over the legality of protesting outside Supreme Court justices' homes, because the Stupidest Man on the Internet, Gateway Pundit publisher Jim Hoft, recently discovered a far more frightening matter: an actual honest-to-Crom DEMON at one of the protests. We are not making this up:
That sounds pretty scary! Let's see that "demon" better! ENHANCE!
Hoft carefully notes that the demon-strator appears around the 15-second mark in this Twitter video, and heavens, it couldn't possibly be some sort of glitch in low-resolution video, could it? Actual real demons protesting to keep Roe v. Wade in place seems far more likely. Maybe the demon escaped from that Portal to Hell that Roger Stone spotted above the White House.
Ever the scrupulous chronicler of the truth, Hoft noted:
We are not saying the girls are demons. We are reporting a demon-like image appears in the screengrab. In fact, the demon looks nothing like the female protester in the video. So how do you explain this?
Well duh. Lizard people. It's always lizard people.
The real question is whether federal law applies to literal demons from hell, or to lizard people, isn't it?
[The Hill / Insider / WaPo / Gateway Pundit]
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