National Pack sale to JBS debated in Senate panel

Liberal Democratic Senators like to call private businesses, under the threat of supoena, to testify at "oversight" hearings so they and their liberal interest group sympathizers can rag on them.

So it was this week before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, as National Packing Co. executives were called, to defend their proposed sale to JBS, the Brazilian giant who bought Swift Packing. R-CALF and a coterie of liberal college professors monopolized the hearing and blasted the transaction. JBS execs, along with the National Packing execs, defended the deal, but their testimony fell on deaf ears, compared to the "red meat" from the special interest groups.

This was a typical formula hearing, one of dozens the Democratic majority calls to promulgate their philosophy. Virtually none of the hearings result in legislation, Congress' function afterall, and are soon forgotton, except to mind-numbed readers of the Congressional Record.

It is the Bush Justice Department who could come closest to stopping the sale of National to JBS. The betting is, they won't, and the battling senators won't either. But its makes for great theatre and press clippings. what they're really after.