JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Agri fends off Obama, Iowa governor

By Ben Harris · August 26, 2008

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama jumped into the fray over Agriprocessors yesterday by slamming the company for hiring underage workers (more on that here). Coming on the eve of the DNC convention in Denver, the comment predictably got a lot of attention. But it followed a far lengthier and more damning appraisal of the company by Iowa governor and fellow Democrat Chet Culver.

Writing Sunday in the Des Moines Register, Culver assailed the company for taking advantage of a failed immigration policy and of “taking the low road” in its business practices. He reviews the history of troubles the company has run into with government regulators and pats himself on the back for the steps his administration has taken in response to the latest allegations. Finally, he tops it off with what is fast becoming standard practice when criticizing Agriprocessors – referencing Upton Sinclair’s landmark expose of the meatpacking industry in the novel “The Jungle.”

Agri responded Tuesday with a comprehensive refutation of the governor and an invitation to tour the plant (apparently, everyone gets one of these now except for me).

Full statement after the jump.

AGRI RESPONDS TO THE GOVERNOR

Gov. Chet Culver in his Sunday op-ed essay urged Agriprocessors to “take the high road” and join the family of responsible businesses in Iowa. We believe that we are indeed on course to take the “high road.”

Agriprocessors moved to Iowa two decades ago precisely because the company had a vision: to create a source of kosher meat that could supply the nation’s growing demand for kosher foods with healthy, good-quality and reasonably priced meat. Agriprocessors chose to locate its plant in Iowa because of what the state had and continues to offer. Iowa offers honest, hard-working people - people who work for our company and people who supply the company with products and services.

With the grace of God, Agriprocessors flourished in the state of Iowa while benefiting the citizens of Iowa. It provided jobs to many hundreds of people and stimulated economic growth not only in Postville but throughout the state. Agriprocessors is very much a part of Iowa’s dream, creating a value-added product from the great beef in Iowa for export nationwide.

Agriprocessors fully subscribes to the governor’s call to begin to take the high road and join the family of responsible businesses in Iowa since it wholeheartedly believes that it is doing precisely that. In just the past few months, it has taken a number of important steps that certainly fulfill that challenge.

While the governor’s first bill in office was to raise the minimum wage from $6.25 per hour to $7.25 an hour, Agriprocessors has raised its minimum starting wage from $7.25 per hour to $10 per hour (for workers with skills). The company has also instituted affordable and quality health care for all of its workers, another prime concern of the governor.

Agriprocessors regrets that some of its employees may have used fraudulent documents to lie about their age. Agriprocessors has been in contact with the Iowa Department of Labor ever since it raised the issue early this year. It repeatedly asked the department to advise it of underage workers who may have fraudulently presented documents to work at the plant. The department did its own audit in April and did not find any underage workers. The company policy is clear: “No one under 18 may be employed at the plant.” When it did learn of several underage workers in the plant, they were immediately dismissed.

Agriprocessors hired Jim Martin, a former U.S. attorney in Missouri, as its new compliance officer to ensure that the company is in complete compliance with all federal and state regulations. It has implemented safety training sessions for all of its supervisors and for all of its workers. The company means it: Safety is its No. 1 concern. Everyone at Agriprocessors knows that, its officers, employees on the line and supervisors.

Agriprocessors hired a former Occupational Safety and Health Administration official to monitor its compliance with all federal and state safety requirements. Agriprocessors is a modern and safe place to work, as anyone who has visited the plant recently can plainly see. It has also hired an experienced staffing company to do its hiring, and it is voluntarily using the new federal e-Verify system.

The water-treatment problem that the governor raises was a problem years ago not only for the company’s plant but also for another business as well. While the other company cut and ran, Agriprocessors stayed the course and invested heavily in a high-technology water-treatment plant that is a model of environmental friendliness and is the envy of companies across the country and, indeed, throughout the world. Ironically, Agriprocessors never received any credit for this bold action.

We are pleased to invite the governor to visit the plant, to meet with our leadership and to see the truth firsthand. In such a meeting, we would be delighted to hear the governor’s suggestions as to how we can further improve to fulfill the governor’s challenge to us. In addition to meeting with us, the governor should meet with members of our community, the mayor of Postville, with our happy employees and our supervisors and our compliance officers.

In the end, we are certain that the governor will see firsthand that our plant is anything but a “jungle,” and, when all of the bitterness of the last few months is taken out of the equation, that we are indeed on course to being on an even “higher road.”

4 Comments | Share This | 2008 Election, Agriprocessors, Kashrut, Religion

Dear Barack… Love, Shaul

By Uriel Heilman · July 23, 2008

Israeli Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz published an open letter to Barack Obama in today’s Jerusalem Post, reminding the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate that Israel’s struggle for its survival is not yet over.

And if anyone’s wondering about the halting pace of progress in the development of Israel’s transportation infrastructure, it’s probably because the transportation minister is more concerned with rockets in Iran than trains in Jerusalem: “The only truly important issue for the State of Israel has been and will continue to be our ability to continue living and surviving here as a people,” Mofaz said.

The Post’s Calev Ben-David says Obama’s real greeting to Israel came yesterday in the form of a Jerusalem terrorist attack within sight of his hotel in the city, when an Arab from eastern Jerusalem went on a bulldozer rampage.

That terrorist’s message?

His message to you was that some things are not negotiable, and some people do not really wish to be negotiated with, at least not on any terms but their own; that Israel’s crime is not what it does or where its borders are, but its very existence; and that no matter which president sits in the White House, those basic - or, one might say, sacred - principles will remain unchanged.

9 Comments | Share This | 2008 Election, Iran, Israel

Blacks are turning to Judaism—is it good for the Obamas?

By Ami Eden · July 17, 2008

The Christian Science Monitor takes a look at the “black conversion movement” – as in conversion to Judaism.

Numbers are hard to pin down. Besides well-known conversions such as that of the late entertainer Sammy Davis Jr., black Jews remain an unfamiliar part of the American religious landscape. Yet Lewis Gordon, director of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, estimates there are as many as 1 million blacks with Jewish blood in the US.

Another recent study by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco estimates that there are as many as 150,000 practicing black Jews in the US today, with synagogues across the country reporting increasing numbers of blacks either exploring or converting to Judaism.

The story has a few interesting details/quotes, but doesn’t come close to backing up the ambitious claim in its subhead: “Conversions to Judaism among African-Americans are growing in a way that could affect the presidential election.”

The writer takes a stab or two at pushing this thesis:

Sen. Barack Obama is lighting up connections to the black-Jewish alliance of the 1960s while at the same time trying to calm Jewish fears over his Muslim middle name and ties to pro-Palestinian activists. This could have critical implications in key states with large Jewish populations such as Florida and Pennsylvania.

In the end, though, the article fails to produce a single black convert to Judaism who is voting against Obama because he’s bad for the Jews. It does have a few quotes from Dov Hikind, a Democratic state assemblyman from Brooklyn, explaining why black hatted Jews will note vote for Obama.

0 Comments | Share This | 2008 Election, Conversion

Rice stands firm on Palestinian elections

By Ami Eden · June 12, 2008

Over at JTA Election Central, we posted on Liz Cheney’s not so veiled swiped at the Bush-Rice policy of pressing for the Palestinian elections that culminated with a Hamas victory. Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo linked to our post, under the headline ”All in the Family,” referring to Cheney’s vice-presidential dad.

Well, later in the week at the AIPAC conference, a Cheney family cousin (Barack something or other) also took a swipe at the Bush administration over the issue:

We must isolate Hamas unless and until they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and abide by past agreements. There is no room at the negotiating table for terrorist organizations. That is why I opposed holding elections in 2006 with Hamas on the ballot. The Israelis and the Palestinian Authority warned us at the time against holding these elections. But this Administration pressed ahead, and the result is a Gaza controlled by Hamas, with rockets raining down on Israel.

Rice is sticking to her guns. Here’s what she had to say about the topic in a recent essay that she wrote for Foreign Affairs:

When Hamas won elections in the Palestinian territories, it was widely seen as a failure of policy. But although this victory most certainly complicated affairs in the broader Middle East, in another way it helped to clarify matters. Hamas had significant power before those elections – largely the power to destroy. After the elections, Hamas also had to face real accountability for its use of power for the first time. This has enabled the Palestinian people, and the international community, to hold Hamas to the same basic standards of responsibility to which all governments should be held. Through its continued unwillingness to behave like a responsible regime rather than a violent movement, Hamas has demonstrated that it is wholly incapable of governing.

Much attention has been focused on Gaza, which Hamas holds hostage to its incompetent and brutal policies. But in other places, the Palestinians have held Hamas accountable. In the West Bank city of Qalqilya, for instance, where Hamas was elected in 2004, frustrated and fed-up Palestinians voted it out of office in the next election. If there can be a legitimate, effective, and democratic alternative to Hamas (something that Fatah has not yet been), people will likely choose it. This would especially be true if the Palestinians could live a normal life within their own state.

The participation of armed groups in elections is problematic. But the lesson is not that there should not be elections. Rather, there should be standards, like the ones to which the international community has held Hamas after the fact: you can be a terrorist group or you can be a political party, but you cannot be both. As difficult as this problem is, it cannot be the case that people are denied the right to vote just because the outcome might be unpleasant to us. Although we cannot know whether politics will ultimately deradicalize violent groups, we do know that excluding them from the political process grants them power without responsibility. This is yet another challenge that the leaders and the peoples of the broader Middle East must resolve as the region turns to democratic processes and institutions to resolve differences peacefully and without repression.

0 Comments | Share This | 2008 Election, Condi, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Some Jewish Dems feeling nervous about the presidential race

By Ami Eden · May 21, 2008

I have an article up about the National Jewish Democratic Council event Sunday night, during which several speakers and attendees expressed concerns about Barack Obama’s ability to hold on to Jewish voters. Even NJDC’s executive director, Iran Forman, who generally can be counted on to dismiss GOP predictions of a Jewish shift, was voicing concern about the presidential race.

[audio:/images/archive/052108_forman.mp3]
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0 Comments | Share This | 2008 Election, Podcast

JTA’s Ron Kampeas goes 1-on-1 with Barack Obama

By Ami Eden · April 9, 2008

JTA’s Ron Kampeas had an exclusive phone interview with Barack Obama earlier today. Among other things, Obama said that it was important for both Israelis and Palestinians to live up to their agreements.

Full interview (sorry, the quality isn’t perfect):

[audio:/images/archive/040809_obama_kampeas.mp3]

For those interested in the Jewciest moment of the discussion, here’s a clip of Obama telling us why Passover is one of his favorite holidays (and Ron getting into the holiday mood):

[audio:/images/archive/obama_talks_pesach.mp3]

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12 Comments | Share This | 2008 Election, Podcast, Politics

The most biased cable news host in the world…

By Ami Eden · April 4, 2008

Perhaps the highlight of Keith Olbermann’s weeklong fifth anniversary celebration of his MSNBC show “Countdown” has been his back-and-forth with Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.

Olbermann kicked off his big week on Monday by naming Rendell, a big-time Hillary booster, the day’s worst person in the world and suggesting that he might be an idiot. Rendell’s crime? Suggesting that Olberman’s favorite punching bag, Fox News, has been the most balanced of all the cable networks in covering the Democratic primary race.

Then the other day, Rendell shot back, asking one reporter if Olbermann ”gets checks from the Obama campaign.”

Put aside the fact that Olbermann’s rant on Monday didn’t really speak to Rendell’s assertion that Clinton and Obama get balanced, if not fair, coverage on Fox. Olbermann might want to check in with NBC’s resident Yiddishist, Brian Williams, about the meaning of chutzpah.

Whether or not Fox (Olbermann prefers “Fixed") News deserves the “most balanced” distinction, what’s indisputable is that Olbermann now presides over the most one-sided anti-Hillary show on all three major cable news networks. These days Olbermann arguably spends more time bashing Clinton than either President Bush or John McCain. And he basically never has a harsh word to say about Barack Obama.

The issue isn’t accuracy: Olbermann hits Clinton hard, but usually above the belt. The problem (if one chooses to see it that way) is that he only goes after one of the two Democratic front-runners. Again, to borrow the Fox paradigm, Olbermann is fair, but not balanced: When the Clinton campaign finds itself under fire, Olbermann sees it as his job to pour on the gasoline; when Obama is feeling the heat, Olbermann moves to put out the flames.

Looking past the hypocrisy issue, is there anything wrong – in the increasingly opinionated world of cable news – with the blatantly anti-Clinton tone of Olberman’s show?

To be honest, I never had much of a problem with his choosing-sides approach when the target was the president. After all, the media is supposed to be keeping watch on the White House, and with so many mainstream outlets falling down on the job, and conservative hosts playing apologist and cheerleader, Olbermann has played an important role.

But now it feels different. In the Obama-Clinton race, Olbermann isn’t checking power – he’s trying to swing the election. And, while liberal attacks on John McCain and conservative attacks on the two leading Dems certainly fall into the same category, playing favorites during the primary season is taking opinionated mainstream journalism to a new high/low. Now we’re not only going to have liberal and conservative shows/networks, we’re going to have them for individual candidates on each side of the aisle? Are there enough shows to go around?

All that said, the real issue isn’t Olbermann, but his role in MSNBC’s overall election coverage and the supporting cast of journalists from ostensibly unbiased media outlets that frequent his show. Olbermann isn’t just a guy with a show – he often plays co-host during debate and election night coverage. To be fair, he does a fairly decent job of toning it down and playing it less crooked in these settings. But, still, why is a blatantly anti-Clinton host sharing the point at a network that still claims to aspire to some standard of balance and objectivity?

Along similar lines, why are the Washington Post and Newsweek willing to pimp out their reporters to a show that is so one-sided? Sure, in print Dana Milbank and Howard Fineman might aspire to play it straight, but Olbermann’s consistently anti-Clinton line of questioning effectively turns them (and their publications) into pawns in his political crusade.

5 Comments | Share This | 2008 Election, Media

Everything Jeremiah Wright knows about being black, he learned from Jews in high school

By Ami Eden · March 25, 2008

The ZOA’s Mort Klein is pushing ahead with his calls on Barack Obama to quit his church. In addition to the organization’s press release from last week, Klein now also has an Op-Ed. In each case he veers off course a bit in trying to argue that Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., has no grounds for harboring any racial bitterness.

In the press release, as a parenthetical P.S., Klein is quoted as saying:

(Obama excuses some of Wright’s statements by saying, “Wright was a child of the 60’s.” In fact, Rev. Jeremiah Wright went to high school in Philadelphia from 1955 to 1959.  The high school he attended was my own alma mater, Central High School.  Central, the second oldest public high school in the country, was a magnet school attracting the elite, most serious academic students in the city.  The school was 80% Jewish and 95% white.  My experience was that the African-American students were treated with the same respect as the white students.  The African-American students loved Central as much as the white students did.  Many of them come to Central’s reunions. Also, it is interesting to note that Rev. Wright’s father was a prominent pastor and his mother was a teacher and later vice-principal of the Philadelphia High School for Girls, also a distinguished academic high school.)

What started out as a tag-on turns into the lead in Klein’s Op-Ed. Here’s the opening few graffs:

The whole world now knows that for nearly 20 years, Senator Barack Obama has attended Chicago’s Trinity United Church and that his pastor is Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In his speech on race on March 18, Senator Obama criticized some of Rev. Wright’ statements but also essentially excused and rationalized Wright’s sermons. He summarized the reality for many African-Americans growing up in past decades – inferior, segregated schools; discrimination; lack of economic opportunity, inability to provide for one’s family – before stating, “This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up.” Half right. African-Americans suffered, many even horrifically, in the past. But Rev. Wright was not one of them.

How do I know?

It happens that, as a Philadelphian, I attended Central High School – the same public school Jeremiah Wright attended from 1955 to 1959. He could have gone to an integrated neighborhood school, but he chose to go to Central, a virtually all-white school. Central is the second oldest public high school in the country, which attracts the most serious academic students in the city.  The school then was about 80% Jewish and 95% white. The African-American students, like all the others, were there on merit. Generally speaking, we came from lower/middle class backgrounds. Many of our parents had not received a formal education and we tended to live in row houses. In short, economically, we were roughly on par.

I attended Central a few years after Rev. Wright, so I did not know him personally. But I knew of him and I know where he used to live – in a tree-lined neighborhood of large stone houses in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. This is a lovely neighborhood to this day. Moreover, Rev. Wright’s father was a prominent pastor and his mother was a teacher and later vice-principal and disciplinarian of the Philadelphia High School for Girls, also a distinguished academic high school. Two of my acquaintances remember her as an intimidating and strict disciplinarian and excellent math teacher. In short, Rev. Wright had a comfortable upper-middle class upbringing. It was hardly the scene of poverty and indignity suggested by Senator Obama to explain what he calls Wright’s anger and what I describe as his hatred.

New Republic honcho Marty Peretz is impressed by this take on Wright; N.J. Jewish News editor Andrew Silow-Carroll – not so much.

My two cents: Wright has supplied Klein with plenty of decent ammunition to make his case that Obama should quit the church (after all, the candidate himself suggested that he might have done so, if not for the fact that his longtime pastor was retiring). But this attempt to challenge the idea that Wright might be carrying some legitimate racial grudges around is ridiculous – especially coming from Klein, who runs an organization that raises money and lobbies in D.C. based on the premise that we here in America can feel solidarity with Israelis living thousands of miles away.

It would be like if I wrote an Op-Ed saying, “It’s true that there are many Israelis who have been killed in terrorist attacks. Yet that can’t be why Mort Klein is so angry about Palestinian incitement. Take it from me. I went to high school just a few blocks away from his home in suburban Philadelphia. And it’s a really nice neighborhood – there’s been no terrorist attacks there. So, yes, Israelis might have a right to be angry about terrorism, but not Mort, everything is swell where he lives.”

4 Comments | Share This | 2008 Election, Politics

Race, gender and Nebraska

By Ami Eden · February 8, 2008

Managing Editor Ami Eden talks with a Democratic fund-raiser about what Nebraska – which holds its primary tomorrow – tells us about race, gender and the fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

[audio:/images/archive/020808_eden_wettan.mp3]

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0 Comments | Share This | 2008 Election, Podcast

Rudy’s next step?

By Ben Harris · February 1, 2008

Former JTA staffer Matthew Berger says Giuliani is too much of a leader to take a Cabinet post if the GOP takes the White House. Berger has been following Rudy’s campaign for MSNBC.

Click the play button below to listen.

[audio:/images/archive/020108_harris_berger.mp3]

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0 Comments | Share This | 2008 Election, Podcast