Perhaps the well publicized hit against the former GIPSA Administrator, Dudley Butler, of being a “fox in the henhouse” originated from meat packers and the foxes they put into these agencies.

I will also have to note that in my own poultry case, the powers running our govt. agencies abused that power once again to provide protection for their meat packer cronies. The GAO (Govt. Accountability Office) already criticized GIPSA (and by implication the Sec. of Agriculture) for pulling out economists from GIPSA after they gained experience of what was happening in the industry so that there would be no competent economic analysis coming out of GIPSA in meat packer cases. In my case, this is exactly what happened. The office was totally shaken up by the Johannes Administration and JoAnn Waterfield after the economists at GIPSA were educated on the latest fraud at that time by producers. The main economist at GIPSA was transferred to AMS after his informed analysis hit the meat packer cronies hard and exposed them to legal liability.

Washington is full of politicians hungry for donations and just as importantly, a story on their actions that will play as a cover story for their cronyism. With respect to the revolving door we not only have Patrick Boyle and the AMS but some other notable players in the behind the scenes fraud of captured public agencies. With respect to poultry, for many years we had Senator Arlen Spector who was head of the Judiciary Committee for many years. Before becoming Senator for Pennsylvania, he represented chicken magnate Frank Perdue in a drunk driving case where Frank Perdue killed one person and seriously injured another. The public case against Perdue was thrown with the help of Arlen Spector who made sure (he was previously a district attorney) that the government did not file the case against Frank Perdue in the statutory time limit. The case never went anywhere.

Perhaps it was Arlen Spector who influenced legislation in the Packers and Stockyards Act so that poultry farmers would not have the same protections of USDA oversight because they “were not defined under the act as “livestock””.

Perhaps it was Arlen Spector’s influence to make sure that federal cases against the meat packers had to be litigated in the federal courts where the abuses occurred. This allowed judge planting for specific cases that threatened the illegal actions of meat packers.

Does Washington work outside the influences of the puppetmasters of money or are the tools of corrupt government so embedded that we have already lost the purpose of regulatory agencies? To most who deal with the regulatory agencies on a regular basis, the answer to that question is not even close. It is why they call these regulatory agencies captured by the very interests they are intended to regulate. It is why crony capitalism has subverted the rule of law with the rule of gold.

The sad thing is that this reality isn’t only affecting farmers dealing with meatpackers. It is so prevalent in our nation’s lawmakers that the “Beacon on a hill” has become real estate long ago sold by politicians who have ended up being the largest threat to our economy and our democracy. Meat packing undue influence is only a small part of the cancer that has engulfed our political elite. It too easily metastasized into the largest problems the nation has faced.