The pandemic has has exacerbated the great divide that now exists between the very-wealthy few and everyone else. While six million people filed for unemployment this year, the nation’s billionaires saw their net worth jump by over $500 billion.[4] Ironically, $500 billion of the COVID bailouts went to corporate recipients whose names the Trump administration refuses to divulge.[5]

Only in the world of food processing has the Department of Justice seemed to take an interest. The same food processers who were ordered to shut down in March to clean their facilities and protect their workers have been making record profits, as we know. This incongruous behavior drew attention from the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice, who have already indicted Jayson Penn, CEO of Pilgrim’s Pride, Roger Austin, a former Pilgrim’s vice president, Mikell Fries, president of Claxton Poultry, and Scott Brady, a vice president at Claxton (Claxton supplies Chik-Fil-A) for price-fixing going all the way back to 2008.[6] The government is going after “big beef” as well, looking at Tyson, Cargill, and JBS, who seem to be artificially keeping grocery prices high while paying bottom dollar for livestock.[7]

Even in the food world, however, this is only a small pushback to the overall trend of profits-before-all-else. Processing plants have been increasing the speed of their lines and stripping back worker employment and safety protections.[9] Workers for Smithfield or Tyson or any of the others still receive a sub-optimal wage. Whether “kleptocracy” is the correct designation for what is happening hardly matters. It sure appears like—whether it’s meat producers colluding or pharmaceutical companies charging more for life-saving drugs that have been out of patent for decades or states offering massive tax breaks to every company that says they’ll create jobs (whether or not they actually do) or a federal pandemic response that seems not to care about its at-risk citizens—those at the top of the heap are using their positions to take and take from the rest of us, all while making sure that their hair is just-so.

Notes

[1] Ryan Ellis, “New York Times’ Trump Tax Return ‘Bombshell’ Is A Joke,” The Federalist, September 28, 2020, https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/28/new-york-times-trump-tax-return-bombshell-is-a-joke/.

[2] ProPublica, “Trump’s Taxes, Finally,” Trump, Inc., 09-28-2020, ProPublica, https://www.propublica.org/series/trump-inc.

[4] Rachel Augustine Potter, “How Trump Uses a Crisis: Repeal Rules While Nobody Is Looking,” Washington Post, June 9, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/09/how-trump-uses-crisis-repeal-rules-while-nobody-is-looking/.

[5] Jessica Corbett, “‘Speaking of Looting…’: Trump Admin. Refuses to Disclose Corporate Recipients of $500 Billion in Coronavirus Bailout Funds,” Common Dreams, June 11, 2020, https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/11/speaking-looting-trump-admin-refuses-disclose-corporate-recipients-500-billion.

[6] Susan Heavey, Tom Polansek, and Diane Bartz, “Pilgrim’s Pride CEO Indicted over Alleged U.S. Chicken Price-Fixing,” Reuters, June 4, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pilgrims-pride-charges-idUSKBN23A2TF.

[7] Jacob Bunge and Brent Kendall, “Justice Department Issues Subpoenas to Beef-Processing Giants,” Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-issues-subpoenas-to-beef-processing-giants-11591371745.

[9] Jerald Brooks and Lakesha Bailey, “Opinion | We’re Feeding America, but We’re Sacrificing Ourselves,” The New York Times, June 15, 2020, sec. Opinion, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/opinion/coronavirus-tyson-poultry.html.