Not kosher

Dystopia in Iowa doesn’t sound right. It’s Iowa. I thought everybody was square-dealing over there in the midwest. Yeah, you’re pretty naive. The Jungle wasn’t about two orphaned babies raised by a kindly she-panther; wherein, the babies eventually lead Brazil to world dominance in football, hackysack and everything else. No, it was about the butcher plants in Chicago, Illinois at the beginning of the 20th century.

So I guess some things never change, and the world’s still going to hell in a hand basket. You gotta wonder why people think they can get away with crud like this. Hey, I’m not a full-on wobbly by any means, but I’m a member of the Operating Engineers Union. Unions are benevolent organizations concerned only with the betterment of their brothers and sisters, right? Riiight. Here’s some ugly recent news about my local’s business manager:

When Don Doser, the local business manager retired before his term of office expired, John Bonilla was appointed in his stead. Such a mid-term replacement is a familiar method for anointing a successor without running the risks of an election. In this case, however, there was a hitch. Members learned that Doser had been awarded “severance” pay by Bonilla. In many construction locals, that would have ended the story; ask too many questions and you don’t work.

But Local 3 members are not easily intimidated. With the aid of information mined from AUD and the LM2 reports filed with the Labor Department, they learned that Doser had received $765,000 which, they estimated, was around $500,000 more than justified. But more! They discovered that Bonilla had paid out the money without approval of the local executive board.

Anyway, back to Iowa. Disgusting. So the biggest kosher meat factory in the country doesn’t sound like hot snot. (Read the comments on that last link.) Accusations of a methamphetamines being produced at the plant?
Is it true or anti-Semitism?

“Everything is a lie,” Rubashkin told JTA.

In a more than hourlong interview May 30 outside his Brooklyn butcher shop in the heavily Orthodox enclave of Borough Park, the 80-year-old Rubashkin was visibly angered by the flood of charges that have imperiled his business, the country’s largest kosher slaughterhouse.

-snip-

Unlike his customers, Rubashkin refused to endorse the anti-Semitism thesis as the explanation for his troubles—but he didn’t seem entirely unconvinced, either. Several times he invoked classical anti-Semitic canards, like the infamous libel that Jews used the blood of Christian children to bake matzah, to underscore what he sees as the baselessness of the claims against him.