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2 Responses

  1. Yoel B says:

    The sentencing guidelines for white collar crime are indeed way out of line. It’s a political thing: “The bankers, the financiers” and so on. However, religious Jews have been using the fact that Jewish law doesn’t imprison for financial crimes to criticize the sentence that prosecutors are requesting for Rubashkin and portraying Rubashkin as a tzadik – and all the while, restitution has not been made and, according to a recent Des Moines Register story, Rubashkin acknowledges not telling the truth on the witness stand. Advocating for a lesser sentence isn’t wrong. Screaming antisemitism undoubtedly helps raise money for the advocacy. But consider the following, sadly fictional news story, and compare it to the likely outcome of what is actually happening: “Spearheaded by Rubashkin’s home community in Brooklyn, tens of millions of dollars have been raised to make restitution to Rubashkin’s victims. Rabbi Ploni, one of the leaders of the effort, says: ‘We have set our priorities as follows: Reimbursing Agriprocessors’ suppliers for their expenses and having to borrow money when they weren’t paid; paying the legal expenses for the workers illegally brought in by Agriprocessors, making sure their wages were paid, and sending them home at our expense; consulting with Postville authorities and community leaders to make sure that local government and charities aren’t ruined by dealing with the fallout from Agriprocessors’ and Rubashkin’s wrongdoing, and, finally, making restitution to the banks for the money they lost in the fraud. While we cannot set conditions on what the banks do with the money, we are strongly urging them to review the home mortgage and small business loans they had to refuse due to their losses to Agriprocessors and Rubashkin and making it a priority to fund those loans when reasonable.'”

  2. Bob Miller says:

    How much of the company’s collapse and failure to pay creditors is attributable to the fraud itself vs. how much to the government’s highly publicized actions?

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