Tyson Foods recently announced that they want to hire 40,000 migrants to work at their factories in America, instead of hiring American workers. Plus, a new study has found that only a handful of legislators in all 50 states actually come from working class families. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

Transcript:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Mike Papantonio: Tyson Foods recently announced that they want to hire 40,000 migrants to work at their factories in America instead of hiring American workers. This is what corporate America has been waiting for for decades. These workers are cheap, they’re replaceable. If you cause ’em harm, cut off an arm, send them back to Guatemala. That’s their attitude. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about it. I hate to say this so many times, we have been doing this story about what Tyson has been up to and what corporate America has been up to with the migration issue. Every time we do it, they say, ah, that’s, you know, everybody wants to believe, yeah, we’re letting everybody cross the border, what, 3 million, I don’t even know what the number is anymore, across the border, because we’re trying to be kind. We’re trying to be compassionate. It’s all about the Chamber of Commerce and associated industry getting cheap labor into America so we don’t have to go overseas anymore. We can bring ’em over here. Right?

Farron Cousins: Yeah. We don’t have to go make a new sweatshop in Saipan when we can make sweatshops right here in the United States. That’s the whole thing. And Tyson, when they got popped for this, because they did have a spokesperson to come out and said, oh yeah, we’re gonna hire 40,000 migrants that are coming in because we care. We want to help these people. And then Tyson, after facing calls for backlash or for boycott, said, no, we, no. That, we never did that. That’s not true. Oh, by the way, we’re also gonna be closing, what is it, a factory in Iowa, Arkansas, Virginia, Indiana, Missouri. They’re just saying, we’re just gonna shut everything down instead.

Mike Papantonio: Because they were caught.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: Okay. So in other words, it got out that what we’ve been saying all along is this migration issue is not about compassion. It’s not about these bring us your huddled masses. It doesn’t have anything to do with that. It has to do with the fact that corporate America saw a way to make a lot of money. Cheap, cheap labor. You don’t have to pay ’em but a fraction of what you pay American workers. If they’re harmed on the work, if they lose arm, great. Ship ’em back to Guatemala. You don’t have to pay all that extra money for taking care of them. It’s really an ugly story. Tyson simply got caught, right?

Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely.

Mike Papantonio: And when they denied it, no, you can deny it, but tell us this, if that’s not what’s going on here, why did you just shut down five plants? Because you can’t keep ’em operating. Right?

Farron Cousins: Yeah. And they specifically said, one of the groups of migrants they’re targeting are the asylum seekers, which those people are far more vulnerable. Obviously, they don’t want to be sent back to their countries. So if they can come in here and show like, hey, look, I’ve got a job. I’m working this job, I’m contributing, I should be given asylum. Tyson can abuse those people even worse and say, listen, you’re facing two things. Either you’re gonna do what we say, you’re not gonna raise any alarms about what we’re paying you, which is pennies on the dollar. You’re not going to say anything about the safety issues that may be happening because if you do, you’re going right back to that country where you’re likely to die. So you open your mouth, you’re outta here.

Mike Papantonio: Stories, they literally show up at their houses at night, put ’em in a car, drive ’em away, and they’re gone. They’re disappeared back to their own country. And the chances of them coming back are almost non-existent. Look, we’ve done so many stories on the corruption of Tyson Foods all the way back to the water contamination where the aquifers were being contaminated so badly in North Carolina, South Carolina, that people were getting sick from drinking the water. It had contaminants, it had biological contaminants in it. We did the story on the fact that, you remember during the COVID issue where they were making workers continue to work with Covid? You did that story.

Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. And Tyson was doing that. Smithfield, Pork was doing that. Because, oh, we gotta keep this out. And then when they.

Mike Papantonio: For the American public. They need more chickens. Right?

Farron Cousins: Right. And then of course, they got in trouble for that. And so I think that’s one of the reasons they’re going to the migrants and saying, okay, well, the American workers told on us. We got in trouble for that. They’re still facing some litigation about that. So we’ll go to the people who know if they open their mouths.

Mike Papantonio: They’re going back home.

Farron Cousins: You’re gone.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. That’s exactly what. Tell me, you have such a great memory, and you and I did this story years ago, who was the senator who went to Saipan, and he says, this is a great model for America?

Farron Cousins: Was it DeLay, Tom DeLay?

Mike Papantonio: It was Tom DeLay. Okay. Tell that story. Give us, because this is come to fruition right here. Right?

Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. Wasn’t it when he went with, did he go with Abramoff on that or was that?

Mike Papantonio: Yeah, he went with Abramoff.

Farron Cousins: So Tom DeLay goes to Saipan and sees literal sweatshops. The people were working for $1 and 13 cents a day. I do remember that number.

Mike Papantonio: Children.

Farron Cousins: Children. And he says, this is such a great model. We should be implementing this in the United States.

Mike Papantonio:: Okay. So this come full circle. This is it. He liked the kids because they had small fingers and they could do things with their small fingers that grownups couldn’t do.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. And he marveled at how quickly they can manufacture these shoes that they were making.

Mike Papantonio: And he was bragging about the fact that they were paid less than a dollar a day.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: Whatever, did this guy die?

Farron Cousins: Thinking about it. I have not heard from Tom DeLay. I mean, never heard from him, but.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah.

Farron Cousins: That is a name that disappeared and I’m glad he’s disappeared wherever the hell he ended up.

Mike Papantonio: Well, he was a powerhouse at one time, a Republican powerhouse in the Senate. And I’ll never forget him coming back and just gloating about the fact of how great the sweatshops were in Saipan and how we can duplicate that in the United States. Here it is. Tyson Foods.

Mike Papantonio: There’s a very good reason why legislators don’t actually do anything to benefit average Americans and it’s because legislators aren’t average Americans at all. A new study has found that only a handful of legislators in all 50 states actually come from working class families. You found this story. I was captivated by this. I had no idea it was this bad. But to sum it up, out of 7,400 state legislators, 116 can be described as people who come from a working background, a working class background.

Farron Cousins: Right. And those are people, they describe working class as you were in a factory or you were in manual labor of some kind. Basically your average blue collar American. And what’s funny is that I actually came across this story a day after I had mentioned, you and I had been filming this show. I said, hey, the problem with legislatures is that you don’t have working class people there. And then the very next day I saw this story, I was like, oh my God, that’s, we gotta talk about this because it lays out the numbers beautifully. 1.6% of.

Mike Papantonio: Where did you find? You found this story from a site called News From The States.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: How did you find, I mean, this is incredible. I would’ve never found this story. I never would’ve known that 116 out of 7,400 legislators.

Farron Cousins: Well, I actually get most of my news, I go to Reddit politics. It just aggregates what users find to be important news.

Mike Papantonio: Okay.

Farron Cousins: And it’s a great resource. It’s nonpartisan. It’s whatever the people want to talk about, they talk about. But this one got me because out of all 50 states, 1.6% of these lawmakers are actually from blue collar backgrounds. And, what that does is it limits the number of people that are in these state houses making decisions about your life who have shared life experience. So if you have somebody that’s sitting in the capital of your state, or even the capital in Congress that was born with a silver spoon in their mouth, you know, I’m a politician because my daddy was a politician and his daddy’s daddy was a politician, but his daddy’s daddy was an oil baron. And that’s what it is. And so those people do not know what it’s like to go to the grocery store and have your debit card be declined. They don’t know what it’s like to not drive for a couple days because you can’t afford the gas.

Mike Papantonio: Or you can’t pay for medicine.

Farron Cousins: Exactly. And when you have people with the shared life experience, they take those issues seriously. And this report even confirmed that.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It didn’t just say it, there was a good confirmation. What I thought was interesting is most of the time they can’t afford to even run. Okay. They can’t take four months outta their lives and go run. These, you know, that class of folks that have never lived a life of really working, they can, they come from a different background. They can’t raise money like those other folks can. The working class can’t go out and talk to a corporation, hey, give me money for my campaign. They know the other guy can, because the other guy works for the corporation in some capacity. He delivers for the corporation. There are these natural obstacles. And the other part is some states where you have, where they pay legislators, they only pay 18, $19,000 and somebody may be working in a shop where they’re making 50, $60,000, it’s hard for ’em to say, okay, I’m gonna go run for office right now. There’s a lot of inset obstacles aren’t there?

Farron Cousins:: Oh, absolutely. And one of the reasons I think that you and I have been so effective at what we do, especially talking about these consumer issues, talking about these economic issues, neither you nor I were born into a life of privilege by any stretch of the imagination.

Mike Papantonio: That’s the understatement. I was raised by eight different families growing up, and there was a reason for it.

Farron Cousins: Exactly.

Mike Papantonio: And I know you didn’t at all.

Farron Cousins: Right. And so we know what it’s like and those are values that we have carried with us throughout our lives. Yeah. And I think we’re both very comfortable at this point. But we still can talk about these things with passion, because it may have been five years ago, it may have been 40 years ago that we went through these, but those memories are still just as fresh. And so we understand what it’s like for these people and that makes us effective because we care, because we’ve been there. And if you don’t have that, Ed Schultz was another perfect example of that.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, I loved, I used to do a show with Ed and we had so much in common because that’s where he came from.

Farron Cousins: Exactly.

Mike Papantonio: A working class.

Farron Cousins: And nobody else had his passion.

Mike Papantonio: No. Oh, good God. I mean, the show ponies they have up there have no, they don’t have anything in common with working class. They’re almost in an elitist bubble. The same way that some of these politicians are in an elitist bubble.

Farron Cousins: They all are.

Mike Papantonio: And so 1.6% that is a staggering number, Farron. This is a good find. I want to explore this a little bit more because I think it’s essentially part of the big political process that we’re having to suffer through right now. You don’t think these, most, these people go to go to bat for things like school lunches. We need to pay for school lunches. They go to bat for equal wage, for better wages. They go to bat on things like safe work environments because they come from that. They’ve seen it. They’ve been around a dinner table where this stuff’s being talked about. These other folks, this elitist bubble that so often becomes the leaders in our political process, they have nothing in common with that, do they?

Farron Cousins: Nope.

Mike Papantonio: Thanks for joining me. Okay.

Farron Cousins: Thank you.

Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week. But all these segments are gonna be posted right here on this channel in the coming week. Make sure you subscribe. I’m Mike Papantonio, and this has been America’s Lawyer, where every week we tell you stories that corporate media simply won’t tell you because their advertisers order ’em not to tell you. And they’re gonna lose advertising dollars if they say something the advertiser doesn’t want. Or their political connections just require that they can’t color outside the lines. They have to color, if you’re Republican, you gotta color within these lines. If you’re Democrat, you gotta color within these lines, and they can’t do anything but that. But as you can tell, we don’t have that problem around here. We’re gonna call balls and strikes whichever side you come from. See you next time.

Farron Cousins: Ring of Fire founder and host of America’s Lawyer, Mike Papantonio has a new book came out this week called, “Suspicious Activity.” Like his other books before it, this book actually deals with real legal cases that Mike Papantonio has handled, but in a fictionalized way. The book follows the character of Nick Deketomis that Papantonio first introduced in his book, “Law and Disorder,” and it carries on the story that began in “Law and Disorder” through “Law and Vengeance,” “Law and Addiction,” “Inhuman Trafficking,” and now “Suspicious Activity.” This book, in particular, deals with the financial institutions that have helped launder money for terrorist organizations, which of course is a topic we have covered extensively here on Ring of Fire. So if you’re a follower of Mike Papantonio’s books, or if this is your first one, you can get your copy of “Suspicious Activity” now. Just go to MikePapantonio.com and place your order. And if you haven’t already, check out Mike’s other books, also available on MikePapantonio.com.