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Dittmer Earning his Packer/AMI/NCBA Money

A

Anonymous

Guest
Larry, Daryl & Daryl
Colorado Springs, CO Dec. 15, 2006

We’ve figured out what happened to the parents of Larry, Daryl and Daryl. You remember the brothers: “Hi. I’m Larry and this is my brother Daryl and this is my other brother Daryl.”

Their parents have evidently been running things over at Social Security. Only parents who don’t bother to keep track of how many sons they’ve named Daryl would be comfortable with a system in which dozens of people share the same “unique” identification number.

That is the ludicrous situation highlighted in the Swift raid. Not only have government bureaucrats failed to do what anyone does with their Christmas list – cross check for duplication – they claim they’re not allowed. Michael Chertoff with Homeland Security urged Congress after the raid to “pass legislation that would allow Social Security officials to pass along information about valid Social Security numbers being used in multiple workplaces ...” (“U.S. to crack down on those who take IDs,” Gazette, 12/14/06)

Well ...what will they think of next?

Swift agreed in 2002 to automatically send names, Social Security numbers and birthdates of employees to the government’s Basic Pilot verification program.

If the feds had been verifying, why were ICE agents and riot police with assault weapons hauling off hundreds of government-verified Swift employees? Anyone designing a system to prevent fraud and error -- incorporating basic accounting principles -- would automatically have it crosscheck submitted numbers to prevent duplication.

Not here. So we have the total shutdown of six packing plants, hundreds of agents and automatic weapons inside the fence and wailing relatives and protestors outside the fence. Stories in Denver papers featured schools, families and churches in uproar, as if illegal aliens should have the “right” to no disruption when their illegal activities are discovered. We saw few national media references to the many millions of dollars Swift lost that day, the meat customers that didn’t receive deliveries, the marketing disruptions or the feedyards with cattle stressed and returned.

Swift had strict guidelines to follow for verification because one arm of government charged they were infringing on applicants’ civil rights by authenticating documents too thoroughly. Participating in the government’s Basic Pilot program supposedly allowed employers to weed out illegals and fake documents. However, Chertoff acknowledged the program is unable to detect authentic identity documents that have been stolen.

Swift’s tightrope – unknowingly employing illegals because the only government tool is ineffective and risking civil rights charges if they question documentation too much – illustrates the impossible situation many labor intensive industries face. Businesses face punishment and lost revenue -- and can do little to reduce the risk.

Laura Reiff, co-chairwoman of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition (representing hotel, restaurant, construction and other service employers), said Homeland Security upset businesses, the Gazette reported.

“They’re frightened; they’re outraged,” Reiff said. “Companies have tried to work with them in good faith. For them to target a company that is using a program that they’re trying to sell is disingenuous.”

Chertoff shrugged off the impacts on businesses as a ripple effect he couldn’t help. He promised more of the same.

This means the beef industry, from packers to feedyards and cow/calf operators, can expect further disruptions. Swift may just be the first to lose millions, even if no charges are filed against it for relying on its government-ordered verification process.

Will political correctness or facts rule the debate? Geraldo Rivera was vociferous with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, charging that packers rely almost exclusively on illegals because they can’t find workers. Rivera ignored the fact that only ten percent of Swift workers were detained. Yet Chertoff said Swift was targeted because they suspected a higher concentration of illegals and several ID theft rings.

Activists and illegal sympathizers act unaware the slaughtering industry has existed for centuries. They peddle the same idiocy Eric Schlosser used on the fast food industry: these industries were invented expressly to exploit illegals, not serve customers.

Many labor intensive industries desperately need a real verification system and at least a transitional, workable guest worker program.

But a public flogging of a Basic Pilot cooperator and disruption of an industry’s major player seems counterproductive to fixing the problem. More such theatrical raids will only increase costs to packers, cattlemen and consumers.

Milton Friedman noted that if you pay people to be poor, you will get more poor people. Likewise, if you provide illegals with a system that won’t detect them and pays them double the minimum wage, you will get more illegals ... and continued chaos in the war zone border ranchers inhabit.

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The Agribusiness Freedom Foundation promotes free market principles throughout the agricultural food chain. The AFF believes it is possible to value the traditions and heritage of the past while embracing the future and the changes it brings. The AFF is a communications and educational initiative striving to preserve the freedom of the agricultural food chain to operate and innovate in order to continue the success of American agriculture.

The AFF - freedom watchdog for American agriculture.



Agribusiness Freedom Foundation
AFF: Promoting free market principles throughout the agricultural food chain.

Website: http://www.agribusinessfreedom.org
 

Big Muddy rancher

Well-known member
Now Now reader you were wrong about flounder and the use of the term"Mad cow" so you could be wrong about Dittmer. You know you are a little blinder by supporters of the ranching industry.
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
There's a lot of questions that need answered about the Pilot Program. If the government told Swift that Pilot would be an effective filter, than I'd say Swift ought to lay into them for selling them a piece of crap and then hanging them on it.

However, by Swift's previous comments where they predicted how many workers they would lose, evidence points that they knew the Pilot program wasn't effective. It looks to me like Pilot was set up as an empty store front so the packers and Uncle Sam could say they were doing their part, when if fact everybody knew it was BS.

It looks like somebody at immigration wasn't in on the deal.
 

Jason

Well-known member
It is pretty obvious that the packers don't have the gov't in their pockets, if they did why would Swift get targeted like this?

Gov't red tape is the real deal here. They tested this pilot program, it is no good. Now what will they invent? Something worse no doubt.

Producers better hope they don't get a national animal ID set up by the same paper pushers that designed this program.

Illegals get papers and numbers and the employers pay the gov't payroll tax, yet most of these workers never see the benefits they pay into.

How do illegals get these papers? Lawyers are a major source. Yet a business that needs hundreds of workers is supposed to reject documents that pass a gov't test and are signed by a lawyer?

Either the gov't needs to be serious about illegals and wreck havok on the economy by identifying them all and sending them home, or they need to open it up and naturalize some of these workers. Whatever they do needs to be fair to all business that have the problem. Don't pick and choose who gets busted.
 

Tam

Well-known member
reader (the Second) said:
Big Muddy rancher said:
Now Now reader you were wrong about flounder and the use of the term"Mad cow" so you could be wrong about Dittmer. You know you are a little blinder by supporters of the ranching industry.

Nope, BMR, Dittmer is a one-note man and he's easy to see through. I doubt sincerely that I'm wrong about him.

I would not actually say I was wrong about flounder and Mad Cow. He takes a pragmatic view -- yes it's a misleading and offensive term but it's the only term that gets the public's attention and which they understand so for the time being he let's it slide. Different people have different triggers. For me, I don't like the term Mad Cow vicseraly (however that word is spelled). It angers me.

I find the Mad Cow image incorrect and inappropriate but I have also been forced to use the phrase as a context in which to describe CJD and TSEs to ordinary people who weren't so unfortunate as us CJD families and you ranchers (especially you Canadians) to have been forced to become TSE experts by circumstances.

First Reader if Swift was turning over the ID numbers and the Government didn't report back to them that the numbers were stolen then how are they to know? :?
If Swift was accessing a GOVERNMENT PROGRAM that was to insure them their employees were not illegals and that GOVERNMENT PROGRAM failed to do so why should Swift take the hit? :?
Just how many other companies accessed this program and are now on the list to be raided as to make a point? :?
What better way of making yourself look as if you are doing your job than to raid a place of business that your have first hand knowledge of illegals working there? :???:
Looks to me as if Government investigators should be asking some serious questions to find out why another GOVERNMENT PROGRAM FAILED!!!! :shock:
Second Reader letting something slide is letting it go uncorrected which you do on Ranchers when Flounder or Oldtimer choose to use the offending term. What Flounder is doing is not in any way letting it slide as he has already told you
i use the term mad cow and will continue to use the terminology. the only thing that really offends me is the bozos that still refuse to acknowledge that NORTH AMERICA as a whole has a serious TSE problem.
and if you told 95% of the people that, they would not know what the hell your talking about, use mad cow, and they do. i.e. mad cow in deer is cwd, mad cow in sheep is scrapie so on and so forth.
unfortunately, mad cow is the only thing that grabs people attention when you are speaking about TSEs, whether it be bse, base, cwd, tme, fse, scrapie, kuru, cjd, ffi, gss or whatever type TSE there of. you can call it whatever the hell you want it is not going to change the ignorance that has surrounded this issue, and continues to do so today, through nothing more than sheer greed. there are many families of TSE victims that do not like to use the term mad cow. i use it to bring the attention to the fact that the ukbsenvcjd only theory was a hoax from the very beginning. it's all the same shinola, just different strains as they mutate from one species to the next. when the world becomes familiar with the terminology of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy and all the surnames there of, and that fact that the ukbsenvcjd only madcow theory was not true, i will then use whatever terminology the industry wants to use. until then, we have our own mad cows here in the USA, now documented with two phenotypes, BSE and BASE, and after the discovery of the second atypical strain, the usda just shut testing and surveillance down to nothing, because they knew they had a serious problem. it's not what you call it, its what you do about it, and to call it anything else, is just trying to make it go away, change the publics perseption of it, and they will ignore it. not gonna happen here. ...
He repeatedly uses the term to make his point just like the rest of the reporters you say you take offence to but you let it slide as not to offend Him. Why don't you correct him Reader you seem to be good at correcting the rest of us? Typos and all

And Last why are you using MAD COW in talks about CJD? Cattle have nothing to do with CJD you even say so yourself!!!!!!!! :x
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
Tam, "First Reader if Swift was turning over the ID numbers and the Government didn't report back to them that the numbers were stolen then how are they to know? "

Swift knew the government program was a sham. Otherwise, why would they of made an estimation of how many workers they would lose PRIOR to the raid?
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
Jason, "How do illegals get these papers? Lawyers are a major source. Yet a business that needs hundreds of workers is supposed to reject documents that pass a gov't test and are signed by a lawyer? "

Lawyers don't traffic in illegal documents. The illegals buy them from criminals who sell identities to other criminals.
 

Mike

Well-known member
Sandhusker said:
Jason, "How do illegals get these papers? Lawyers are a major source. Yet a business that needs hundreds of workers is supposed to reject documents that pass a gov't test and are signed by a lawyer? "

Lawyers don't traffic in illegal documents. The illegals buy them from criminals who sell identities to other criminals.

I worry about Jason sometimes. Do you reckon he thinks that these illegals go straight to a lawyers office as soon as they cross the border? :shock:

Maybe the firm "Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe" should set up an office somewhere along the Rio Grande and make a fortune. :???:
 

Jason

Well-known member
I have friends that hire foriegn labor. I know what they tell me happens. The papers are signed by a lawyer. They say they know the workers are there illegally but they can be held liable if they report them. The gov't rejects the paperwork and the illegal can have a new set by the end of the day, signed by the lawyer that signed the first set.

Yep you boys gained some credibility saying there aren't crooked lawyers.

Most politicians are from the legal profession.
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
Jason said:
I have friends that hire foriegn labor. I know what they tell me happens. The papers are signed by a lawyer. They say they know the workers are there illegally but they can be held liable if they report them. The gov't rejects the paperwork and the illegal can have a new set by the end of the day, signed by the lawyer that signed the first set.

Yep you boys gained some credibility saying there aren't crooked lawyers.

Most politicians are from the legal profession.

From the story of the raid from the Omaha World Herald;

When asked by a reporter about the ID, the mother cried.

"We don't steal them," she said. She paid about $1,000 for her fraudulent identification.

The mother, who spoke on the condition her name not be used, said she bought the documentation years ago from someone in Kansas who told her the name belonged to a dead person. She needed it to get a job but also used the identity to obtain a Nebraska driver's license and medical insurance
 

fedup2

Well-known member
Jason writes :[It is pretty obvious that the packers don't have the gov't in their pockets, if they did why would Swift get targeted like this? ]

I love the mentality of Sh!tHead & his packer whores! Just when you believe they have just said the stupidest damn thing imaginable, they top themselves!
Ya, right Jason! And when the GAO did thier little audit of those who are supposed to watch the packers & pointed out their failure to enforce………...........ah hell! Whats the use! :???: :roll: :roll: :roll:
 

Jason

Well-known member
So Swift pays off gov't officials to get illegals overlooked in their business but then gets raided....ya right.

R-calfers are the ones always claiming they know the packers pay off the gov't, now it is selective?
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
Jason said:
So Swift pays off gov't officials to get illegals overlooked in their business but then gets raided....ya right.

R-calfers are the ones always claiming they know the packers pay off the gov't, now it is selective?

You want to tell us the packers don't "donate" to the parties and/or indidual canditates? Go ahead and make that statement, Jason.

While you're explaining, I'd like to know why Swift whines about following the Pilot Program, but yet estimated before the raid that they would lose 400 employees.
 

Econ101

Well-known member
Jason said:
So Swift pays off gov't officials to get illegals overlooked in their business but then gets raided....ya right.

R-calfers are the ones always claiming they know the packers pay off the gov't, now it is selective?

Jason, our govt. is big. Real big. Not all of the people in our govt. are paid off. Not all follow the politicians in thier selling out to big corporations.

Your all or nothing stance shows how little you know. Perhaps you should stick to Canadian politics.

The illegal immigrant issue was taken up after a huge political uproar. It shows the limits of government sellouts of American interests. Bonilla lost his seat and the packers have to find others to pay off in the new Congress. Feel assured there are other casualties waiting in the wings.

You are beginning to sound a little too much like SH. Do you have a circus chicken up your sleeve?
 

fedup2

Well-known member
Let me try this a little different this time Jason. No one is saying that everyone involved in the government is bought and paid for! Do you understand that? 2. I am not now, nor have I ever belonged to R-Calf! That is one of the many labels that people like you and Sh!tHead like to stick on people when you have nothing else! Just like little kids. If I don’t like something the packers are doing, I am automatically a ‘blamer’! So to keep this fair, in return, I hope you don’t mind being known as a ‘packer whore’.

You & Sh!tHead keep referring to things like, if the market moves, it is not controlled. If swift got raided, they cannot have the government in their pocket. No Jason, I don’t believe they can control the government but they damn sure can ‘influence’ various departments. Do you understand that?
In our defense dept., contracts are awarded to various plane contractors. After the awards, some in the defense dept retire from the military and become nicely paid lobbyists to the companies they awarded the contracts to. It happens all the time.

Many former government employees go to work for the packers as lobbyists, etc. Some former packers are employed by the government. They trade so many employees back and forth, half of them don’t know where their paychecks are coming from & don’t care. In some cases, they are probably paid by both.

I find it hard to believe that you can’t see how this can tip the scales one way or another. There is one more group that is trading employees back and forth with the same two groups. Care to guess? Oh sh!t, that makes me an R-calfer again! It might happen yet, their no.1 recruiter is working awful hard on it. :lol: :lol: :lol:
 

Jason

Well-known member
So now checks and balances in the gov't work to protect the public interest.

Not what we were led to believe before. It is interesting how when you defend one action it uncovers another.

I believe there are crooks in every walk of life.

All I am saying is that something constructive needs to be done about illegals. Canada has watched and now is bringing in workers through proper channels before the economy draws them here illegally.

Granted, the border with Mexico is a harder issue to deal with, but there should be incentives for business to register potential illegals. Work visas or something of the sort could be easier to obtain and make it so workers walk across a border with the US's knowledge instead of making it lucritive enough for them to buy stolen ID. If a worker could earn the same wage legally or even slightly less, with no fear of INS, they would.
 

Econ101

Well-known member
Better yet, we should work with Mexico to make sure they have an economy that can sustain their population instead of just a few making all the money and the rest so poor they have to track north just to make a living.

Jason, we need to keep your commenting in perspective. I think several on this board have provided that perspective.
 

ocm

Well-known member
Econ101 said:
Jason said:
So Swift pays off gov't officials to get illegals overlooked in their business but then gets raided....ya right.

R-calfers are the ones always claiming they know the packers pay off the gov't, now it is selective?

Jason, our govt. is big. Real big. Not all of the people in our govt. are paid off. Not all follow the politicians in thier selling out to big corporations.

Your all or nothing stance shows how little you know. Perhaps you should stick to Canadian politics.

The illegal immigrant issue was taken up after a huge political uproar. It shows the limits of government sellouts of American interests. Bonilla lost his seat and the packers have to find others to pay off in the new Congress. Feel assured there are other casualties waiting in the wings.

You are beginning to sound a little too much like SH. Do you have a circus chicken up your sleeve?


Hey Econ, do you suppose Swift plants will soon be for sale? Government harrassing them! Repeat of history. Yeah, that's a bit cynical, but not outside the realms of possibility.
 

agman

Well-known member
Sandhusker said:
Jason, "How do illegals get these papers? Lawyers are a major source. Yet a business that needs hundreds of workers is supposed to reject documents that pass a gov't test and are signed by a lawyer? "

Lawyers don't traffic in illegal documents. The illegals buy them from criminals who sell identities to other criminals.

Are you 100% sure there are no lawyers who are also criminals who traffic in illegal documents? Since when are lawyers immune from any wrongdoing?
 
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