This is a remarkable piece of journalism from Mark Ames via AlterNet and Naked Capitalism. This is today’s must read, although I take exception to the call-to-arms in the last paragraph. Before going that far, I would wait for the courts to weigh in on the illegal foreclosure story sent out earlier. But this new story does help one understand how Michael McLendon came to see things differently.

Strangely enough, there was almost no media coverage of the occupation — you had to rely on various right-wing outlets like CNSNews.com, whose article I blogged at the time , or the left-wing Democratic Underground.

But what even the right-wing anti-government people won’t report is the true reason why the Army was called out in the first place, something that goes right back to the cause of the shooting rampage: billionaire exploitation of the local Alabamans, not just by the chicken oligarch, but from higher up the predator food chain — Wall Street banking behemoth JP Morgan Chase.

That’s because the right-wing would have to come face-to-face with the ramifications of their ideology, and how the metastasizing of private power isn’t in spite of it, its because of it. The chickens (pardon the pun in this case) coming home to roost.

That meant squeezing lower-middle-class workers for more work for less pay, or in Pilgrim’s case, more work for no pay: In August 2007, the U.S. Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against Pilgrim’s Pride accusing it of grossly undercompensating its employees. That same year, 10,000 Pilgrim’s Pride employees launched a class-action lawsuit demanding compensation for their work.

There’s a novel idea. Just call them “communists” in the reich-wing media and then ignore them and all will be well.

- A Post From leftofdayton.net