Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Facts Show Rubashkin Case to be a Travesty and Nothing Less Than an Old Time Libel

An innocent man is freed.  Alan Dershowitz and numerous congressmen, senators and former US attorneys general spanning the entire political spectrum all put their names and reputations on the line for him.  Hundreds of thousands of Jews, and many Righteous Gentiles, celebrate around the world.  As usual, that doesn't stop the social justice warriors (what a complete misnomer if ever their were one).  

And if that were all that happen, who would care?  If PETA wants to go around smearing the kindest and greatest we have, that's between them and the bird brains they represent.  But when people who know better start hemming and hawing for fear of offending those who are perpetually offended, it's time to respond with the truth. 


In fact, since none of the allegations of criminality hold up (we'll get to that, painstakingly so), the PETA activists have now taken to spreading an outright lies, such as “mistreatment of workers.”  This is an especially heinous accusation being that Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin, was not only never accused of mistreating anyone, but was known for paying medical bills of his worker's children (yes, prosecutors were so shocked by his generosity that they turned over every stone, assuming that he must have been using the children as laborers.  This was met with laughter by all workers, the numerous youth organizations that he sponsored generously regardless of religion or creed, and disproven by the very PETA tapes that were used to go after him when one wild bull out of thousands caught itself on a hook in the slaughterhouse).


Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin was the man to work for.  Several people who he has helped have recently come forward.  A young student who was getting married relayed how Rubashkin gave him thousands for his wedding, a shock as he didn't even know him at the time.  Among those who testified to his great spirit were his workers and none had a bad word to say about him.  In fact, it's the people who are making these claims that did untold damage to his workers, shutting down the plant and ending their employment for months.  This is so ridiculous it's like Josef Goebbels accusing Simon Wiesenthal of being an anti-semite.  Of course, this is above the heads of most who've taken to discussing the case.

Most troubling of all are the cacophony of so-called rabbis and religious social commentators entering the fray.  In fact, this case more than any other is separating the wheat from the chaff.  While many point out that Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin was the victim of nothing less than a modern blood libel (the facts show it and this is the point of the rest of this piece) and while the brilliant and indefatigable Rabbi Yitzchok Schochet has documented how political leader after political leader, including retired attorneys general with little to gain and much to lose, have all put themselves on the line for Rubashkin, others have taken a different course.

There's an extremely unhealthy desire among talking head rabbis to be all things to all people. Rather than tell people the Torah truth, that modern society and philosophy has little to offer in any area (harsh prisons that ruin lives, fomenting of strife within families and hedonism that makes people unproductive and prevents them from succeeding on any level), they seek to “understand all sides of an issue” and pay homage to same.  They generally know nothing of Torah, or at least little of its supremacy over modern Western pop-psychology.  That doesn't stop them from prognosticating on all matters of societal importance. 

They've certainly shown their true colors in the Rubashkin case.  Conrad Black is a man who has dedicated his life to the pursuit of truth, and as a results has made more enemies than even Rubashkin did for dedicating his business to making kosher meat affordable.  Having sat on numerous boards (and having paid a price and faced his own high-tech lynching for having raised their ire), he spares no words in calling what the prosecution did in this case demented.  Yet these “learned writers/thinkers” and self-proclaimed “rabbis” have taken a different line.

Historian par excellence Conrad Black, Attorneys General from Edwin Meese III to Ramsey Clark (the irony of which likely goes right over the heads of these “learned rabbis in their eyes only”), numerous members of Congress and no less a legal professor than Alan Dershowitz have gone to bat for Sholom Rubashkin with nothing to gain for having done so.  Supposedly learned rabbi columnists and “noted thinkers” have taken another route.  While freely admitting that they know nothing of the applicable laws, in their ever increasing need to be adored by all and garner influence with the social justice warriors among us, they write that if the social justice network claim that Rubashkin did a crime, then he must have and they accept it, but hey, he is a great man of faith and that's what's worth celebrating.   

Well great scribbling sages of our times, “you're great men of faith too, despite the fact that you shot Abe Lincoln, are secret Columbian drug lords and are responsible for the Rwandan genocide.”  Don't like the characterization pinned on you?  Then don't do it to Rubashkin and give a pass to a modern day blood libel spurred on by PETA and the forerunners of Antifa in the process.   


Still, we must refute the allegations head on, even painstakingly so.  So let's go over the facts:


PETA – No Longer Just for Holding Falafel

Let's start at the very beginning of this sordid, anti-semitic, libel of a case.  To do any less is to fail to recognize a modern day Beilis Trial.  The talking heads will think I'm exaggerating.  They would have given Russia a pass back then too.  If “Never Again” means anything, then we must at least look at the fact. 

PETA, probably illegally so (all is fair when it comes to saving insomniac squid, oysters with heartburn and apparently now, raging bulls), decided to tape hours of footage of Rubashkin's plant.  Sadly for them, they found no illegalities. 

The tapes are actually the best proof that no laws were broken, not even the flimsiest of local ordinances.  If they could have caught any infraction in the upkeep or housing of the animals, PETA would have gone to every governmental agency in a 500 mile radius.  They did not because they could not.  Yet when it comes to going after the murderers of Fluffy the Chicken, one cannot let facts stand in the way of pursuing “justice.”

So all laws and ordinances were followed, which means that the animals wBut what counts is PR, or in their case PS – publicity stunts.  And so when one bull out of thousands fell upon a hook meant to draw the blood out of the meat immediately after slaughter (a very beneficial process found almost exclusively in kosher, but obviously only of benefit to humans), the world had to be alerted.  That wild animals happen to sometimes jump up and fall was of no consequence.  That reams of humanitarian laws were followed was also of no consequence.  PETA had video of (one) bull (in ten thousand) falling momentarily on a hook and someone's got to hang. 

Just Who Are PETA

Well, they're a great and caring organization that in just one recent incident had to pay out almost $50,000 to a family for stealing and “euthanizing” their dog.  And here's what even the Washington Post, hardly a conservative mouthpiece, has to say about them: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/at-petas-shelter-most-animals-are-put-down-peta-calls-them-mercy-killings/2015/03/12/e84e9af2-c8fa-11e4-bea5-b893e7ac3fb3_story.html?utm_term=.75e1ee53f7e0.

But that's not all.  They're also the kindred spirits behind the mocking of those who perished in the Holocaust, something that they find comparable to the slaughter of chickens before Yom Kippur.  Certain special members of theirs have been known to join in chants in support of Jews in ovens.  Fortunately for them, they've gained a level of support among the “reasonable” and “even-handed” talking heads in Crown Heights.  They're the same vicious and noxious organization that put pressure on the court, resulting in Rubashkin's initial 27 year sentence.  May the Almighty save all from their hands.  

Here's an op-ed by The Yeshiva World, a website that more often than not takes a moderately socially conservative line.  This piece is worth reading, although other pieces on their site are very favorable to the left -  https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/general/1372963/op-ed-peta-comes-to-boro-park.html.  Enough said.

When All Else Fails, Turn to Immigration Enforcement

I'd imagine that PETA would lose much of its support if it was found to be working with immigration officials and encouraging the rounding up of Mexican farm workers.   Well, since they did just that and bragged about it, please send a copy of this to their donors.

I'm not advocating for the hiring of those who are not allowed to work here.  I will say that the every meat processing plant and slaughter house in the country does this in plenty.  I will also point out that in the case of the Agriproccessors employees, none had a criminal past and most were family people.

Let's also remember that Rubashkin did not do any of the hiring.  Let's also recognize that all of them submitted paperwork to the HR director.  Rubashkin was also charged and acquitted of any involvement.I'm not saying that this is right.  I am saying that there isn't a plant that hasn't done this, Rubashkin's involvement is a guess at best and when only one in the country is targeted by PETA, something isn't right.

When Even That Fails, Yell “Bank Fraud”

If someone accidentally overspends on their debit card, that can be considered bank fraud.  Likewise, if someone overdraws their account.  Accidentally bouncing a  check is even worse.All of these can technically be considered crimes.  Calling someone who did this a criminal is another matter entirely.

Rubashkin didn't bounce a check, so what did happen?  Why was anyone neutral who knew anything about the case so vociferous in his defense?

The most serious of the “crimes” was that his company misused the revolving line of credit.  The line of credit was supposed to be accessed based on a customer having received the purchased goods.  Rubashkin's company, Agriprocessors would access the line of credit once the purchaser had placed the order, but before it was delivered.

A few crucial points here:

- The line of credit was arranged, managed, accessed and paid off by the CFO, not Rubashkin who had nothing to do with the handling or management of company finances.  This was presented in court and the answer of the other side was something to the effect of “it's his company, so he's responsible anyway."

- Even the CFO was likely unaware of the fine print, that this line must be accessed “upon receipt” and not “upon order” of goods.

-
The bank lent the funds based on purchase orders, not delivery slips.  This pretty much proves the point above.

-
The line was maintained in good stead and paid off regularly until the plant was closed down by immigration officials (based on allegations that Rubashkin was formally acquitted of). 

There's also an over 95 year old Packers and Stockyards Act.  One of its provisions is that livestock cannot be sold on credit.  One runs afoul of said provision if purchasing a bull on Mon. and paying for it with a check the next day.

No one has ever been criminally prosecuted under this act other than Sholom Rubashkin.  Companies have been fined for running afoul of other parts of it, but not usually this part, but no one was prosecuted.  Sholom Rubashkin was given years in prison for paying for a bull 11 days after he received it. 

Agriproccessors needed to be and was mindful of a slew of laws and regulations.  That's why PETA could get them on nothing, even after hours upon hours of secret and probably illegal tape.  They were not mindful or knowledgeable of a 1921 act that no one had ever been prosecuted under. 

Then there's the allegation that the value of the plant was inflated.  If you based it on 2005 and 2006 sales and not on 2008 (when it was shut down, although this year was used in the argument, being that it predates the actual “inflation” charge), there was no overvaluation.  If you base it on the market share, pricing and demands for glatt kosher (a higher level of kosher, based on their being no holes at all in the animal's lungs) meat, there was no overvaluation,  Rubashkin did indeed lower the prices of the entire glatt kosher meat market and that public service was his main drive in business, but it resulted in him having a huge share of the market. 

Many consumers specifically demanded Rubashkin meat because of its extra reliability as far as kosher laws were concerned.  Restaurants purchased from him because of this customer demand and because of his commitment to comparatively low prices.  At one point, the retail market was his.  This changed with the PETA onslaught. 

The judge in the case also committed numerous improper acts.  She was the judge who signed off on the immigration warrants, a fact that she failed to disclose to the defense.  This itself rendered her unfit to oversee the criminal trial. 

This was not the worst of it.  Her husband owned stock in the private prisons that were used in the raid on Rubashkin's plant. http://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2017/08/a-federal-judge-put-hundreds-of-immigrants-behind-bars-while-her-husband-invested-in-private-prisons/.   In fact, he purchased additional stock in the private prison company just 5 days before the immigration raid.  And as for the immigration raid that Linda Reade signed off on, well, Congressowoman Zoe Lofgren termed it “a cattle auction, not a criminal prosecution.”   

This isn't the worst of it either.  Linda Reade's husband was also a partner at the Bradshaw Fowler law firm that worked extensively on the sale of Rubashkin's plant.  In short, the husband of the judge who sentenced Rubashkin to more than the prosecution asked for, profited mightily from the extraordinary raid that his wife had ordered on Rubashkin's plant, from the stock he purchased 5 days before and from the forced sale of Rubashkin's plant, due to his wife, the “presiding judge's” actions. 

Bottom line:  To say that Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin knowingly committed a crime in this case is nothing more than a disgusting act of libel.  The facts alone speak for themselves in disproving it.  As such should have been clear just be seeing the list of people who put themselves and their reputations on the line for him.
To Reb Sholom Mordechai and family and all who care:

I can only imagine the pain of, after having being released, having had senators, congressmen, former attorneys general all putting themselves on the line for you, including many who are retired from political life and need no favors, and then seeing the wanton defamation from people who have no knowledge of the case, spewing the most ridiculous spins and making it up as they go.  Bear in the mind that the Baal Shem Tov, the Alter Rebbe and others were all false branded criminals or worse by those who had lost their reason. 

Also realize that 500 times more people feel and know that you were wronged and that you are right.  Pray that those who err so publicly and who would jump to destroy anyone who's not a fellow traveler in their circus caravan see the light.  But recognize in the meantime that anyone with a head or a heart or who just has decent intuition can tell light from darkness, good from bad and smut peddling from innocence. 

If you can judge a man by his enemies, then you Sir, so defamed by PETA, the Open-Orthodox social justice warriors, the ham eaters at “Hekhsher Tzedek,” and every other bag of mixed nuts, are a source of light beyond any imagination.  Of course, we all knew this.  Sometimes it just takes an opponent to prove it.

Friday, December 22, 2017

Yes, Sholom Rubashkin is Factually Innocent

Yes Sholom Rubashkin Is FACTUALLY Innocent

For my dear friends who have embraced darkness at a time of great joy, understand that your scary swan song is reminiscent of one who greets the news that a 95 year old has survived a quadruple heart attack (may Hashem protect all) with a loud “he's not worth celebrating. I remember him when he was six months old and he once spat up on his grandmother.” The only difference here is that the only vomit in this case are the lies and negativity themselves.

Before jumping head first into the mud (we will, for those who can't wait), let's first and foremost deal with who Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin is. Anyone who knows him will tell you that he never legitimately turned away anyone who needed anything. Of his income, he did not give 10%. He did not give 20%. He gave far more and everyone who came to him was well received. May Hashem bless him to give and nurture the world.

Even his business was centered around helping people. He and his father single-handedly lowered the price of kosher (Biblically mandated) meat throughout North America. His whole live revolved and revolves around helping people. He is also a deeply spiritual man. On top of this, he has given countless donations and sponsorships to youth teams, assistance centers, etc. regardless of religion, race or creed. This is all fact and has been attested to by said organizations.

“Oh, but he committed a crime.” No, not to any sane person who actually looks at the facts, HE DIDN'T.

He did not do anything untoward with regard to banking – which we'll get to. He did not bring in illegals, as two levels of prosecution both lost in this regard, one having to withdraw and the other resulting in acquittal at trial. His HR staff didn't double/triple vet them, but the same can be said for any slaughter house (the only difference is that Rubashkin treated these stable hands far better than any of his competitors, even giving them money to pay their medical bills and other serious needs). And he was not even cruel to charging bulls, which was the opening salvo in the public relations war against him.

He did sell Biblically sanctioned meat at a low price. But that was only a crime in the now defunct USSR – and to the great beacons of a light at PETA. A close look at the facts shows that that's about all he did, aside from his charitable work.

But don't just take my word for it. Let's start from the beginning:

No one disputes that his slaughter house was targeted only after AND AS A RESULT of PETA's persistent harassment campaign. For those who don't know who PETA is, while their no longer associated founder seems like a decent person, they are now the group that holds memorials for the 6 Million Chickens “murdered” before Yom Kippur, complete with Holocaust-mocking/”wanting another one” (ch”v) undertones. Some of their other acts of glorious wonder include encouraging parents to give their kids beer instead of milk (because beer isn't “stolen from cows without permission”) and, more recently, kidnapping dogs from people's porches and euthanizing them well before the mandatory wait time for owners to reclaim them.

In short, they'd be up for the Humanitarian of the Year if they didn't so disdain humankind. So let's make them happy and give them the Braying Mule of the Year Award instead.

These PETAites, complete with quite contagious PETAitis, placed hidden cameras in Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin's barns. And lo and behold, wild animals acted like wild animals. One cow, out of thousands, even jumped up and caught its neck on a hook, or something like that.

So they raised a cry of outrage to everyone who didn't stop and think for a second. Never mind that weekly government visits showed that all storing conditions were met, that the animals needed to be kept in good shape in order to produce marketable meat and that independent ritual slaughterers who could have worked anywhere were there on a daily basis and are generally loathe to work under dire circumstances. No, no, one cow jumped up and had an accident and everyone from the CEO on down is now Heinrich Himmler with peiyos.

Now, Rubashkin did slaughter a lot of cows – and he ate them too! So if we go with PETA's motto that “Chickens Are People As Well,” then Sholom Rubashkin is a mass murderer and a cannibal, as are 95% of Americans.

Even then, one has to wonder:
a) why not go after the makers of Barbecue Sauce, the real enablers in this situation, instead and
b) doesn't all this take away from effecting real positive change, like finally giving disenfranchised wild wombats the right to vote?

BUT FOR SANE PEOPLE, LET'S CONTINUE...

Now the genocidal murder of raging bulls is not an official crime. Nor is the general safe herding of animals. In fact, the biggest proof that the living conditions of Rubashkin's animals were above board is that if any laws were actually broken, even local ordinances, the kind folks at PETA would have been on it like a piranha let loose in PetSmart. They weren't because there was nothing there.

So what was PETA to do when their hours, upon, hours, upon hours – enough to fill a whole mental ward and its bedpans – of footage ended up producing diddly squat on toast? Well, let's look for other crimes. And as it happens, those valiant saviors of “chickenkind” didn't care much for migrant working Mexican people.

Now Rubashkin's meat packing plant did have workers who were not allowed to work in the country. He did not hire them. His HR actually did vet them and they provided bogus socials, and in many cases bogus ID. He did not bring them into the country. He did not seek them out. He also factually had no way of knowing that they were illegal.

So his HR team didn't vet all employees with extra care and scrutiny. I'm not going to say that's right. I am going to say that:

a) this is the case with almost every single meat packing plant in the nation, none of which were raided by ICE with the owners arrested
b) these were people who were already here and would have likely turned to robbery had no menial jobs been available
c) it may not be right, but you don't shut down a plant that legitimately employs hundreds while doing nothing to any of its competitors
d) this does not warrant cooking up a charge with which to give the owner a 27 year sentence, may no one know of such things
e) no one disputes that the plant was shut down after being targeted by PETA and made fodder of in the press, mostly over the cow that jumped up onto (or fell back on, or danced musical chairs around - whatever) a hook in the barn

Moreover, neither he nor his then 80 plus year old father, who was dragged into court and tried over this as well, were directly involved (or even indirectly involved) in hiring. This also seems to be the one and only issue that no one involved quite cared about, other than to use as an excuse to shut down the plant, close Rubashkin's business and drive up the price of kosher meat.

His plant raided and him charged with flimsy immigration violations in spite of the above, the now temporarily defunct plant could no longer repay its loans. And looking at the fine print that no one looks at on a revolving line of credit is how they finally stuck it to him.

This becomes more complicated. This is also why Sholom Rubashkin went to trial on the merits, yet the accusation of “white collar” crime has poisoned many a jury, and has caused them to convict based on the principle of “there must be something here.” To understand what happened here one has to understand the nature of such a charge and such a dog fight.

If someone takes out a home mortgage and is specifically prohibited from transferring the property to a company, this can be “bank fraud.”

If someone writes a check or uses their debt card in such a way that causes an account to be overdrawn, the case can be made that one has engaged in “bank fraud.”

In none of these scenarios is the person seen to be the living, breathing, reincarnation of Al Capone. In none of these scenarios should the person be prosecuted or did the person have intent to commit a crime. And if such a person has received a 27 year sentence, then they are the victim of abject cruelty beyond belief on the part of the judge.

The True Judge has reasons and “All of His Ways are Righteous” and much has been written of the suffering of the righteous. It is for this reason that Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin has so merited to awaken the collective Jewish heart and to awaken goodness and kindness among the leaders of the nation. It does not for one second excuse the cruel, callous and contemptuous acts of Linda Reade, the true criminal in this case.

Rubashkin's CFO had opened a revolving line of credit. It was used whenever an order was placed. It was maintained in good stead for years. But officially it was to be used only after an order had been delivered, not once it had been placed. And therein lies the “bank fraud.” A ridiculous technicality that the bank did not care about and that the credit holder would not pay attention to.

Not that it matters, due to the sheer ridiculousness of the case, but Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin himself had nothing to do with the bank loan, its draws, the receivables or anything of that nature. He was charged and sentenced because his financial manager arranged and utilized the loan, in a way that the bank had no problem with and in a way that few would think twice about. If not for the plant closing, the revolving line of credit would naturally have been maintained in an up to date manner unto this day, just as it was for years.

It gets worse.

Rubashkin was sentenced to much extra time due to the Packers and Stockyards Act. This Depression Era law stipulates that one may not purchase livestock on credit. In other words, one may not buy and receive a cow on Wednesday and pay for it on Thursday. Rubashkin's company often did this. While this ordinance has been used (usually maliciously) to shut down and fine companies, no one other than Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin has been prosecuted and sentenced for it. Certainly it doesn't sound like something worthy of prosecution.

In short, all creditors were paid except for the revolving line of credit, which was also paid off reliably for years – until the company was singled out and shut down by immigration enforcement on charges that were only brought against it and not against 30 companies that did worse.

It gets worse still.

Linda Reade's husband profited mightily from the forced sale of Rubashkin's company, Agriproccessors. She was also found to be the judge who signed off on the immigration raid against the plant, something she never disclosed when presiding over the trial over the “financial crimes” (using the line of credit after an order was placed instead of when the goods were received one or two days later – there were no other “financial crimes”). This is the same judge who held up appeal after appeal totaling a span of years, all out of pure spite. And is she usually a tough sentencer? No, she recently sentenced a terrorist collaborator to 5 years, less than a fifth of Rubashkin. The words “may the name of the wicked rot” apply to her, and may she meet the True Judge speedily in our days, who alone decrees – and may He do so.

When the USSR of old rounded up shochtim, ritual Biblical slaughters, took them into a forest and shot them in the middle of the night (I'm not exaggerating and have met many of their descendants, may they live long), people decried their actions. The KGB were fools. They should have given them a bank loan and found a contractual violation on Page 57B, Subsection F, Paragraph 2. That would have taught them.

The Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin case is nothing more and nothing less than a case in which a religious person selling religiously mandated meat was targeted, hounded and made fodder of by PETA and their friends in the media. Yes, the same PETA that ridicules the Holocaust every year, seeing it as a joke with which to deride the descendants of its survivors on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year.

Let's not help them. Let's actually do what any decent person would do. There's a reason why 6 former US Attorneys General, spanning the entire ideological spectrum of the nation, saw fit to stand up for Sholom Rubashkin.

In 1952-53, the Soviet Union accused Jewish doctors of trying to kill Stalin. This “Doctor's Plot” was about to be used as a pretext to send Jews throughout Russia to Bessearabia, on what would have been a trail of suffering. The plot was only abandoned after Stalin died on the Jewish holiday of Purim 1953. Mapam, a communist party in Israel, wholeheartedly announced its support for the Kremlim during that terrible time. “If the Soviet Union says so, it must be true.” The only difference between PETA and the Soviets is that one was a country and the other are wannabee lunatics. In over 60 years, we should have learned better than to take either at face value.