10-23-25 - 9am - Meat Packing and Judge Threatens to Arrest ICE Agents

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hillary Clinton making any comment about Trump making changes for
the White House and adding the ballroom is hysterical. Hillary,
what did your husband do in the White House with
Monica Lewinsky. Additionally, when you guys left the White House, oh,
you stole hundreds of thousands of dollars of furniture and

(00:23):
other items from the White House. You have no room
to talk.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hill Man, Why does Alexa have to be so hard
on Hillary? She's so mean, she's so mean. I mean,
it's the red hair.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Is that what it is? Yeah? Probably poor Hillary. That's
why we like him though. Exactly. Meat.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, we're gonna talk about meatpacking. Insert joke here. Let's
first think backwards about you go to King Soupers or Safeway,
or to the Whole Foods or Trader Joe's wherever you go,

(01:12):
and you pick up a package of hamburger or a nice,
really bone in rabbi or a really nice tender fillet.
Where do you think that came from? Oh, it came
from a rancher. That's right. It came from a rancher
or a farmer who had some cattle on the farm somewhere.

(01:34):
But if you think that, you left out everything in between.
Some ranchers and farmers send their cattle before they go
to market, They send them to a feed lot to
fatten them up, to get them ready to be sold,
and then they get sold, and then they get processed. Now,

(01:58):
the beef that I buy comes from some some guys
that raise cattle down in Elbert County, and they use
a local processor and the processor down there, which you know,
obviously to for them to stay in business, they have
to do a lot of game processing too. So the
whole process, you know, pretty much anything including maybe some

(02:23):
bodies you want to get rid of it. They might
do that too. I don't know. I've never asked. Maybe
I should drag We might have a new place to
get rid of some of the bodies there we keep
stored over there in the storeroom that or in one
of the offices that nobody uses, you know that we
stuff in those cabinets that nobody ever opens. We can
take We could take those bodies out and that in
process down in Elbert County. The modern meat packing industry

(02:46):
is dominated by four four companies, Tyson, JBS, Cargill, and
National Beef. Those companies control somewhere between just being conservative
eighty five percent of US beef processing, that's pretty much

(03:07):
a cartel.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
When you've got on.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
The low end, fifteen percent is done by like little
guys out in Albert County or maybe some other mid
sized companies. But I bet that most of the beef
that you pick up, I don't care how it's labeled.
I don't care what it says on the package. I
don't care what it says, it was processed by one
of those four giant companies, Tyson, JBS, Cargill.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
And National Beef.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
And my point is, despite hundreds of brands on the
grocery shelves, when you actually go pick up whatever piece
of meat you're buying, most of that meat traces back
to those four firms.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
And they have grown massively through.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Very aggressive mergers and acquisitions, which really started full force
back in the nineteen eighties. And why was that, because well,
we can anti trust enforcement. We just kind of let
it go and we didn't sit back and say, wait
a minute, we're kind of letting a monopoly develop here.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
So how does that influence beef prices?

Speaker 2 (04:15):
With so few buyers, those companies set the price for cattle,
and they squeeze the ranchers who have to accept the
lower prices or what they risk not selling their stock.
That's why I know you've seen the commercials. You've either
seen the ads on television. We used to have one

(04:39):
that was that we advertised for here on this program,
although he was more of a retailer. But a lot
of ranchers actually do direct to consumer sales. Why well, one,
it's it's a niche market, but they can advertise all

(04:59):
of the advance. You know, we name our cows. We
know the name of every single one of them. We
don't give them antibiotics. They're grass fed. Look at the
beautiful ranch they're raised on. They're raised down you know,
outside Wallsenburg, some way out by Westcliffe in a beautiful area.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
And you know.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
This, this is the meat that you're eating. It's it's
really good marketing. But the ranchers that don't do that,
they have to sell their cattle to those four buyers
and they and they squeeze those ranchers lower the prices,
and then the rancher if they don't, if the rancher

(05:40):
doesn't accept that lower price, what do they do. Well,
now they've got all of this, they've got this cattle.
They can't let the cows grow too old. I mean,
there's just there is like a wine, there's a certain
age at which that beef is at its optimum, and
that's when you want to sell it. So if you

(06:01):
don't sell it to one of the Big Four, you're
kind of screwed. Now, the Big Four have been accused
and sometimes actually sued for intentionally slowing down production or
they will actually collude and coordinate purchases to keep supplier

(06:22):
lower than demand warrants. And they do that by running
plants at or above design capacity that raises labor and
maintenance costs, and then in time to tight supply, those
companies will bid less aggressively less aggressively for cattle, and
that keeps raw cattle prices low. That strategy alone increases

(06:44):
the spread between what they pay for cattle and what
they sell the meat for. There have been a lot
of lawsuits. You can go to courthouse News and find
all of lawsuits that allege collusion and price fixing among
those companies coordinating both what they pay cattle suppliers the ranchers,

(07:06):
and the rate at which meat is then sent to
the retailers. They can agree overtly or covertly to buy
less cattle and push down bids, ensuring that everybody in
this oligopoly maintains their profit margins without undercutting each other.
This is going on all the time. You want to

(07:29):
bitch and moan about Big Pharma, what you really ought
to bitch and moan about is Big Beef. Their contracts
with suppliers are often opaque. They keep prices in terms hidden,
and it makes independent verification really incredibly difficult. So the
consumer prices stay hi. The ranchers, meantime, are getting screwed.

(07:51):
So the spread between farm wholesale and then the retail
meat prices that continues to widen. Retail for consumers continue
to rise even when raw cattle prices fall or stagnate.
And whether those raw cattle prices fall because of true

(08:12):
market conditions or because of the meat packing cartels colluding
to force those prices down, what does that mean.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
Well, that means it's.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
The Big four able to capture a larger portion of
the overall profit as the gap between what they pay
and what you pay continues to get wider and wider.
There are some independent watchdogs, and there's some government data
that shows that during periods of high beef prices. The
consumer shares a relatively minor proportion of the causes. Most

(08:45):
of the hike in prices is captured in the margins
that are controlled by the meat packers. So are they
keeping Are they keeping prices high? I think that the
This is not a criminal trial, so I don't have
to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
This is a civil case.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
I'm making a civil argument here, so I've got to
prove by the preponderance of the evidence, just more so
than not, that I think this is true. I think
that they are keeping prices higher because with limited competitions,
these few companies can do the following three things. One,

(09:25):
they can manipulate how much meat gets processed. What does
that mean? That means that they can actually control the
supply that gets seen by the consumers. So if you
go to the market, you go to the grocery store,
and there doesn't seem to be quite you know, sometimes
the beef refrigerators are just packed full. Now I know

(09:50):
that sometimes it's just because it's been a busy week
and they haven't restocked. But if you look behind the
curtain at the grocery store, there's not enough much left
behind the curtain to put out front for you to
pick up and put in your grocery cart. Why is that?
Because the supply is being controlled by the meat packers,

(10:13):
then I would argue that they actually fixed prices among themselves.
They don't do competitive bidding. In fact, they avoid competitive bidding.
Why why Well, that would otherwise lower the costs for
the stores, lower the cost for the consumers, and lower
their profit margins. The meat packing sector is a text

(10:38):
book oligopoly. They've used consolidation, they've used control of supply,
they've used anti competitive practices, and these companies have the
power to keep both the price paid to the ranchers
artificially low and the price charged to the consumers artificially high. Well,

(11:03):
we're the regulators where you know, we we want free markets,
but an oligopoly is not a free market. So where's
the free market? Or don't we have regulators in place
that would say, wait a minute, what you're doing here
seems to be verging on a monopoly, for verges on collusion,

(11:24):
verges on price fixing.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
What's going on? Well, to be as.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
Objective as I can, and honestly, I'm not very objective
about this. The regulatory responses such as USA USDA rule updates.
They try to fight back, but the market remains deeply
concentrated and it's really resistant to true competition. Been a
lot of articles in the Hill about that this may

(11:57):
be this is This is pure speculation on my part.
I think that the regulators had to some degree been
captured by these big meat packing companies. Go back to
the names. If these names don't mean anything to you,
you're not paying attention. Tyson, JBS, Cargill, National Beef. Now

(12:22):
I did not for the purposes of this segment, go
in and see what kind of campaign contributions they were making.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
I don't know. Maybe they are, maybe they're not.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
I haven't really researched debt in depth to find out
what kind of revolving door there is between the USDA
and the inspectors and some of their regulators and these
four big companies. But I would bet you I would
certainly speculate that there's a revolving door there. So they've
been able to actually capture their own regulators. So everybody's

(12:59):
turning a blind eye TOEMA. If the evidence suggests that
they're keeping the prices higher with limited competition, what can
they do. They can manipulate how much meat gets processed.

(13:21):
They can control the supply that you see at the
grocery store. They can fix the prices among themselves. They
can avoid, as I said earlier, the competitive bidding that
would otherwise lower costs for the stores and ultimately for
the consumers. Then they do this, they'll structure contracts with

(13:42):
large retailers so aggressively that even companies like McDonald's find
it difficult to leverage lower prices. Even a gigantic corporation
as huge as McDonald's is has a hard time because
they need a lot of beef to sell a lot

(14:03):
of big macs, and so they too are subject to
these higher prices. So McDonald's has to figure out a way.
In fact, they're trying to do it now. McDonald's trying
to figure out a way, how can we bring back
a value meal, How can we bring back or lower
some cost to lower the cost of the overall cost

(14:23):
of a meal at McDonald's, while we're paying a higher
price for the beef that goes into the one thing
they sell the most, which is a hamburger. That's why
I say this is a textbook oligopoly consolidation, control of supply,
anti competitive practices that keeps the price paid to the

(14:45):
ranchers low, the price charged to you as a consumer,
whether you as a retail consumer or you're a wholesale
consumer like McDonald's, he keeps those prices high. Why does
for examp sample, Why does for example, I'm trying to

(15:05):
think here, why does giving so much Why does consolidation
give so much pricing power to the meatpackers because it
allows them to do all those things I just described,
opaque contracts, price collusion, price fixing. If you will, we
could change this with regulatory action, But it seems to

(15:27):
me that the farmers and ranchers are pissed off because,
at face value, the easiest thing to do is, oh
my gosh, you're importing more beef from Argentina. No, as
I said earlier in the last hour, what we're doing
is we're replacing Brazilian beef with Argentinan beef. So it's

(15:47):
not that we're increasing the imports. We are making a
strategic decision to help an ally at the same time
that we're trying to punish someone that can be perceived
at least as an enemy Brazil who has too CLOSEI
of ties to China, so the amount coming into the
country really hasn't changed, and that price hasn't changed, and

(16:12):
they still need that kind of beef to do the
blend to create the hamburger, which is the predominant kind
of beef that is bought. The fix, I don't know
what the fix is. The fix is the Department of Justice,
the Anti Trust Division could go against them for price fixing.

(16:39):
They could do that. They're near monopolistic power through these
procurement practices, pricing strategies, the regulatory gaps, the legal maneuvering,
all of which do face some ongoing investigation and some
lawsuits from some anti trust authorities. But until Trump comes

(17:04):
out and acknowledges that this is the problem, don't be
hoodwinked by the ranchers complaining about imports.

Speaker 4 (17:13):
Michael, I bought some roast beef the other day store,
and yeah, it was ridiculously expensive. I bought one of
the big name brand prepackaged ones. Frankly, it kind of sucked.
So the next time I went to buy roast beef,
I bought the Deli slice stuff and at seventeen dollars
a pound, it was kind of painful, but it was

(17:33):
worth it because it was just so much better.

Speaker 3 (17:38):
Yeah. I don't know who.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Is the wholesaler for that brand, but you really ought
to go find out see if it's one of the
Big four. I just I don't know, and I don't
know because, as I say, I don't. I really rarely,
if ever, go to the grocery store and buy meat,
unless going for Broad's or something because of you know,

(18:02):
because we keep aside to be from the refrigerator or
in the freezer. No, we don't give them the refrigerator.
We've talked a lot about the law fair going on
with Trump. I was going to do the story yesterday
but never got to it. But a district court judge

(18:23):
the name of Jeffrey Cummings, he was appointed to the
bench by Joe Biden, has issued another order.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
Now, best I can tell.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
This is applicable only to his courthouse, but I'm not
quite sure of that, so leave that to further for
your own discovery.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
He has barred.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement ICE agents from arresting illegal
aliens inside the Cook County Courthouse downtown Chicago unless they
can produce a warrant. Now, I think This is legally
and ethically dubious, but it follows a number of arrests

(19:13):
that were executed by ice both inside and near several
Chicago area courthouses. As Judge wrote, this, the fair administration
of justice requires that courts remain open and accessible, and
that litigants and witnesses may appear without fear of civil arrest.

(19:37):
Before I finish, I want you to think about something.
Let's just let's let's go to the television first. How
many times have you seen in a drama series where
you know someone's in a courtroom and you know there's
a Perry Mason moment, and a witness or somebody it

(19:57):
gets off the stand and they've just said something that
helps the DA the prosecutor.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
Prove a crime.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
And as a walk out of the courtroom, there's a
couple of cops and they say turn around and they
start reading the miranda rights. Anything you say can we'll
be used against you, and they arrest them right there
in the courtroom, or not in the courtroom, but in
the court house. The fair administration of justice, he wrote,

(20:24):
requires the court remain open and accessible, I would agree,
and that litigates and witnesses may appear without fear of
civil arrest. Why because if let's say, for example, that
Dragon's been dragged into criminal court because you know he

(20:45):
committed some crime. I don't know what Dragon would do.
He's a he's a bliss. He wouldn't hurt a flee.
He might beat me up, but he wouldn't hurt anybody else.
But Dragon is in court for some legal matter, and

(21:05):
he walks out, and he's been sued by iHeart for incompetency,
which you know is probably a very legitimate lawsuit that
could occur at any moment. And so you know they
are trying to find Dragon. So they hire a process
server to serve Dragon with a summons for the lawsuit. Oh,

(21:25):
I know Dragon's in court at ten o'clock this morning
after he finished that stupid Michael Brown show. He'll be
there at ten thirty for his hearing on something. And
so the process of her server says, I think I'll
just sit on the bench out in the hallway and
when he comes out, I'll serve him. Now, I know
that's not an arrest, but that can happen too. I

(21:47):
think this judge is way out of line here, he
continued in his order one thing seems clear. ICE rousted
American citizens from their apartments during the middle of the
night and detain them in zip ties no less, far
longer than the brief period authorized by the Operative Investigation
or the Operative regulation.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
What does that have to do with anything? I mean, you're.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
Talking about something that they raided them in their apartments
during the middle of the night.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
Oftentimes regular cops, not ICE agents, will go arrest a
wanted felon or wanted criminal.

Speaker 3 (22:30):
In the middle of the nights. We haven't see it.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Seen that in the movies Knock knock, knock, or it's
a nonde roten no knock, great.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
And they go bursting through the door and they arrest
them in the bedroom.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
You know, of course, the wife covers up and rolls over,
the girlfriend covers up and rolls over, and you know
he's standing up there butt naked, and you know, they
turn around, you know, can I put some shorts on? Yeah,
I put some shorts on, but we're gonna put the
ancufs on you first. This judge isn't living reality. His
order aims to explicitly prevent ICE agents from making what
are called collateral arrests, which even regular cops can do

(23:10):
where Immigration enforcement agents executing an arrest warrant also detain
other illegal immigrants illegal aliens that might be present in
or near the courthouse. Hey, I got to go to
court for some reason, and your buddy, who's also an
illegal alien, says, I'll drive you down there. Okay, So
that your friend that drove you to the courthouse sitting

(23:32):
out on the bench, ICE comes in sees you. They've
been looking for you, and they arrest you. What authority
does this judge have to.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
Prevent them from doing that. I don't get it, but
I will tell you this.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
These are judges acting in contravention of the law. I think,
acting unethically.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
And what are they doing.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
They're substituting what's supposed to be the law with their
own opinions about how things ought to be conducted. So
here's a Democrat appointed judge threatening that he would back
the directive by ordering the arrest of any ICE agent
who violates it. Well, that'll be interesting. So you have

(24:15):
a federal judge. This is a federal judge. It's a
US district court judge who is going to arrest another
federal law enforcement officer. I know he's not law enforcement.
He's part of the judicial system. Is going to arrest
a federal judicial federal judicial office, a law enforcement officer

(24:35):
who is outside his courtroom waiting to arrest someone. He's
going to have that person arrested.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
Who's going to do that? The US marshals.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
That's like when you raid mar Lago and you've got
the Department of Justice in the FBI faced off with
the Secret Service. We're here to protect the former president. Yeah,
well we're here to raid his house. Well, okay, who's
going to make the first move? Talking about a Mexican standoff?
You got right there now. In response, DHS is obviously

(25:04):
defending the actions of the ICE agents, arguing that the
courthouses should not be exempt from law enforcement activities. DHS says, quote,
we are not some medieval kingdom. There are no legal
sanctuaries where you can hide and avoid the consequences for
breaking the law. Nothing in the constitution prohibits arresting a

(25:25):
lawbreaker where you find them. That is exactly right, Chimney Christmas. Then,
in other related news, the several top employers in this
country are halting sponsorships for H one B visas for

(25:45):
non technical positions after Trump issued that executive ordered back
in September imposing one hundred thousand dollars fee on all
new visa applications. So to allege, I should put the
word ledged in here. H one B Visa Mills, Cognizant,
and Topic Consultancy Services are among the firms that are

(26:07):
now moving away from reliance on cheap foreign labor.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
Do you know what the result of that is.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
Has had a direct impact on these companies' decisions to
move away from reliance on cheap foreign labor and actually
going out now and starting to recruit and find oh
American citizens who are obviously authorized to work in the
US and who have the same skills that they were

(26:34):
trying to get immigrants to come here under the H
one B visa program, which is supposed to be for
highly technical where there's a shortage of those particular types
of people or who have unique artistic or otherwise kind
of creative services that are missing in this country. They

(27:00):
see they're defending the high fee because compared to capacity
administrations they're trying to encourage, which seems to be having
the effect of forcing these companies to focus on training
and expanding the American labor force and its skill and
in fact, last week, the US Chamber of Commerce, representing
three hundred thousand corporate interests, filed a lawsuit challenging the

(27:23):
one hundred thousand dollars fee. Many members of the US
Chamber are bracing for the need to scale back or
walk away from the H one B program to the
detriment of their investors' customers and their own existing employees. Hey,
Chamber of Commerce, why don't you go see first before
you file a lawsuit whether there are some American citizens

(27:44):
who have the skills that some of your members came
They need an H one B visa four.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
This program has been so.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
Abused for Look, don't get me wrong, I'm a supporter
of the visa program, but use it for its intended purpose.
Don't use it to find cheap labor.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
So what do you call it when you have a
butt hiccup? We need some explanations here.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
We leave it to your imagination radio theater of the mind,
butt breathing and butt hiccups. Democrats Marxists, But I repeat myself,
we're really hoping that Trump's trade policies would drive inflation
back up to the Joe Biden levels, and that hasn't happened.

(28:37):
Some things remind remained high. I was so excited the
other day I went to Sam's and Premium innlet it
was like two ninety three. I went last night it
was back to.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
Three oh four. So, you know, e whatever whatever.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
George Stepanopolis tells us that we cannot afford Thanksgiving turkey
this year. So George step novelist, decided to have the
CEO of Walmart on to talk about how in the
hell are people going to deal with a turkey this year? Well, George,
you're kind of a turkey yourself. He didn't go too

(29:14):
well for George.

Speaker 5 (29:15):
Let's talk about Thanksgiving first. Food prices are up, especially turkey,
so what are you doing to how customers keep the
cost down?

Speaker 4 (29:23):
Welioy morning, George, It's great to see you.

Speaker 6 (29:24):
We are really excited about what we have planned for
this year at Thanksgiving, and I can't believe it's already
that time of year, But this is a time of
year when people are busy, they don't want to sacrifice quality,
and we want to do all we can to help
them celebrate the holiday anyway they want, and we want
to do it in a way that's very affordable with
a lot of value. So I want to talk about
a couple of things with the Thanksgiving basket. First, we

(29:47):
started putting together this idea of having the entire basket
easy to purchase, easy to assemble, back in twenty twenty two,
and this year we will have the best prices on
this basket we've had since the program started, down about
twenty five percent from last year, down about fourteen dollars
for the basket, which puts us.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
What my question was, we brought you on to tell
us how bad things are that people aren't going to
be able to afford a turkey.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
Do you remember the question?

Speaker 5 (30:18):
Let's talk about Thanksgiving first. Food prices are up, especially turkey.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
So what are you doing to help customers keep the car?
What are you doing?

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Turkey prices are outrageous? What are you going to do
to help people want to buy a turkey?

Speaker 6 (30:30):
Thirty five percent from last year, down about fourteen dollars
for the basket, which puts us in a position where
this basket is just under four dollars a person when
serving ten people. So we have a great basket that
has a mix of our great brands like butterball Turkey's
our turkey prices, George, are all the way back to
what they were in twenty nineteen.

Speaker 3 (30:52):
What George's producer and booking person didn't do a very.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Good job of vetting this particular guest, the CEO of Walmart,
we'd like to have you come on and talk about
high turkey prices. Now, the CEO of Walmart just once,
this is a native vad This is Walmart being able
to go on Good Morning America. In fact, this says
here on the Chiron only on GMA and talk about

(31:20):
his great prices. So whatever, the booking person asked the
CEO of Walmart or his press person about, hey, this
is Good Morning American. Once you on, Okay, book me,
book me, because once again they don't give a ratsass.
It shows the disconnect between reality and the mainstream media.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Spent ninety seven cents a pounds.

Speaker 6 (31:41):
So we're really excited about the progress. I was really
impressed when the team brought me this. It was better
than I expected. So we're looking forward a great holiday season.

Speaker 3 (31:49):
Yeah, hey, George, get real