Truth: Mexicans don’t set your pay. They scoop corn.
If I were to suggest that the good people of Northwest Iowa were getting snookered by politicians, it might affect our self-esteem as astute civic participants.
A curious fact does come up: Folks like Rep. Randy Feenstra and Sen. Joni Ernst are busy beavers chewing on Chinese Communists buying our farms, while Gov. Kim Reynolds went down to patrol the Mexican border. Feenstra and Ernst have been in the pocket of Smithfield Foods, a wholly owned subsidiary of China, Inc.
Reynolds happily does the bidding of the meatpacking industry, along with the governors of Nebraska and South Dakota. The food giants dumped millions into lobbying during the pandemic.
Iowa law long has banned foreign ownership of farmland. The Chinese own less than three hundredths of one percent of US farmland. This is hardly a leading issue for our congressional delegation. It’s what you do when trying to secure left-behind angry voters — tell them it was the Chinese who stole the farm, or the Mexicans who cut your wages in half.
That’s what the reader who sent me an email complaining about me believes, that the libs are conspiring with the corporatists to steal our birthright, and that the lamestream media is trying to silence her (although she declined through silence my entreaty to publish her letter to me). Gov. Reynolds is the best ever, our schools are great, and she loves Iowa.
History reveals that Mexicans did not bust the union in Storm Lake. President Ronald Reagan did. Laotians did not cut the pay in half and increase the line speed. IBP did. The local newspaper editor did not write NAFTA or solicit the consolidation of the pork industry, and is not trying to silence the voice of the frustrated who feel overwhelmed.
Meanwhile …
The Iowa Department of Education reported last week in its annual assessment that our test scores continue to decline despite many years of Republican leadership.
Not to say that anyone is being duped or is drunk or hit their head, but …
Gov. Reynolds is working time-and-a-half trying to dismantle labor rights and collective bargaining. Democrats and Republicans dare not challenge the Right to Work law that Moses brought down from a think tank in Virginia where the bush still burns bright.
Terry Branstad’s son was selling business access to China after dad served as ambassador. Tom Vilsack’s son works with Bruce Rastetter on getting carbon capture credits for ethanol companies. I am not aware of any Mexicans involved in the deal, unless they happen to be scooping corn.
Just who brought the foreigners into Iowa, if foreigners are a problem?
When they busted the union by shutting down Hygrade, and the farm crisis hit right after, rural Iowa emptied out. That’s what flung open the gates to immigrant labor. I recall people putting their problems on our new neighbors from Southeast Asia at the time. Then they fixed their ire on Mexicans for awhile. And then they got used to it. Anybody who has paid attention in Storm Lake over the past 40 years knows that immigrants are not the problem, income is the problem.
No Mexican or Laotian is setting your income. The company is. It controls the political process through donations, and through owning the channels of propaganda that endorse and gush “alternative facts.”
So long as you fear the foreigner you don’t pay attention to who is actually rigging the game. It’s all a ruse: Feenstra and Ernst cluck about China while taking their money. Reynolds bucks up the National Guard along the Rio Grande while Mexicans cut meat for the Chinese in Denison. The theatre is crude but it does the job in two acts: divide and conquer.
Who is employing undocumented immigrants in Sioux County dairy barns? Who sets their wage? The barn owners write checks to Randy Feenstra and Joni Ernst and Kim Reynolds while they complain about the Chinese and Mexicans. It is not an issue that half the pork generated in Iowa is owned by the Chinese, and that it goes right back there along with the profits.
I’m not suggesting that the minority party does not sleep under corporate sheets, but it does sleep in the minority. In Iowa, the Republicans are solidly in control and have been for a long time. Which is why they need to make you think that Mexicans are the problem, or that the Chinese are about to buy that farm you’re renting. Why do they need to buy the farm when you work for scraps raising their hogs? Not that you could be duped or anything.
Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.
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Art your column reminds me of the 1960 LBJ quote, as related by press secretary Bill Moyers: "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it," he said. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Substitute "immigrant" for "colored man."
As far as your observations about IBP/Tyson go: The United Auto Workers have a master collective bargaining agreement for all the plants within John Deere governing pay, benefits and working conditions. The United Food and Commerical Workers does not for the various IBP/Tyson plants - including your community, Waterloo, Columbus Junction and elsewhere. I'm sure that helped allow Tyson to play a shell game during COVID, moving production from plant to plant -- until my friends at the Waterloo Courier (and you had similar concurrent coverage) broke the story about an ultimately fatal COVID outbreak at the Waterloo Tyson plant. It evoked the ire against the company of our county sheriff (who happened to be a Democrat) on our COVID response team and brought lawsuits and the national media down on company officials' heads.
In an April 16, 2020 article, the Courier reported: "Hundreds of Tyson employees in Waterloo have refused to work in recent days, according to multiple people who have reached out to The Courier. They say the company is not protecting workers from coronavirus spread." Others were going to work sick for fear of losing their jobs.
When those workers didn't get satisfaction from the company, or their union, they reached out to the Courier.
And that is why any community needs a strong local newspaper. You know it. I know it. And all of our friends and neighbors need to know it.
I had a priest once tell me that I performed "a valuable work of humanity" working for a paper. That is no more apparent than at times like these, when people are being exploited by those in power. That's why we do what we do, and God bless you for continuing to do it.
Silly Republicans. The Chinese aren't buying up all our farmland, Bill Gates is!
Reynolds' old boss, Ambassador Branstad, brought IBP into Iowa and that broke the old traditional meatpacking plants along with their unions. Over 100,000 Iowa workers left during Reagan's first term and blue collar pay in Iowa has been abysmal ever since. (Workers, not families. The families followed later and the seven House seats of my youth dwindled to just four.)