What intrigues me the most about today's demonstrations is this tidbit:

Large U.S. meat processors, including Cargill Inc., Tyson Foods Inc. and Seaboard Corp. said they will close plants.

Or are there political considerations? Wasn't Arkansas' Tyson Foods a major Clinton crony? (Yes, it's old news now, but Tyson executive Archie Shaffer was one of the figures pardoned by Clinton during the last days of his administration. Details lovingly preserved for posterity here.)

As to Cargill, the leftist Counterpunch accused the Clinton administration of granting the company a near monopoly status.

These details would be boring to anyone these days but a conspiracy theorist. Not only am I disinclined towards conspiracy theorizing, but I'm a free market libertarian, as well as a realist who understands why companies pursue policies they perceive to be in their interest. (If I ran Tyson, Cargill, or Seaboard, I'd probably give everyone the day off too!)

Why would I care whether my company was seen as being in bed with the left? Or with Hillary? Or the Reconquista movement movimiento?

For what it's worth, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch does not seem terribly fond of Seaboard:

Seaboard Corporation, an agribusiness giant and Africa, Inc. member, has been called by Time Magazine a "master at milking government for welfare."(29) From 1990 to 1997 Seaboard received at least $150 million in taxpayer money, in addition to its annual revenues of $1.8 billion.(30) In one case, the city of Albert Lea, Minnesota gave Seaboard a $2.9 million low-interest loan and special deals on paving employee parking lots and on its sewer bill when Seaboard reopened a pork-processing plant that had once been the town's largest employer.(31) It lowered the wages of workers by $4,500 per year and began to import workers from Mexico and Central America to work at the plant.(32) Workers were paid so poorly that they were forced on to welfare.(33) It also created a sludge crisis for the city's waste treatment plant, refusing to upgrade its own sewage treatment facility.(34) Seaboard phased out the plant four years later when it found a better corporate welfare package, leaving the city of Albert Lea with an abandoned slaughterhouse, a large debt, and higher utility bills.(35) This is typical of the way Seaboard uses public funds from state, local, and federal governments to maximize its own gains, often at the expense of those providing the funding.(36) Indeed, its corporate welfare extends to its operations in Africa ­ it received $11.2 million in Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) insurance for its wheat and corn mills in Mozambique.(37)

I can understand why big business likes illegal alien workers though, because they represent a loophole of economic freedom.

What I'd like to know is why George Soros isn't being more vocal. FrontPageMag.com says he'd funding the agitators, but Moveon.org is eerily silent.

Maybe leftist agitators don't enjoy being seen as being in bed with big business.

MORE: Let me admit my bias here. I have long thought that business is vastly overregulated and that this overregulation is a major factor in making illegal aliens an attractive labor source to employers, large or small. It strikes me as ironic that on this issue, the major push for greater -- highly draconian -- restrictions on business is coming from the Republican Party. But isn't the Democratic Party supposed to be anti-business?

Maybe nothing is supposed to make sense any more . . .