The news is everywhere. Sound the trumpets, toll the bells, the President, Donald J. Trump,has brought an end to one of the longest nightmares seen in this country.

Start from the beginning.

In 2007 Sholom Rubashkin was raided at his meat processing plant in Postville, Iowa. The charge? He was employing illegals. Now, he had tried to vet for illegals, but state law had precluded him from doing anything more than asking for their social security numbers,which they provided. Forged, of course, but he had no way of knowing that the cards were faked(thank you, w bush, for bungling E-verify, on top of everything else).

So, he was arrested, the illegals were sent to go work somewhere else, and the same judge that organized the prosecution and whose husband received money from the unions that had sworn revenge on Mr. Rubashkin for refusing to employ union laborers. Of course here fused, kosher meat costs three times more than regular meat as it is. To employ union labor would to raise the cost of kosher meat to ten times that amount, no exaggeration.Religious Jews would have been forced to go elsewhere or go vegan. Religious Jews,however, don’t go vegan, as we are not pagans.

Later, at the trial, the judge refused to allow a significant amount of evidence onto the floor,and the jury still voted not guilty.

Still, the kept him locked up, imposing fines and penalties to the tune of forty million dollars. He would have to sell his company to make the payment.

And he tried to, several times, but the government consistently blocked the sale. Eventually he went to the bank, and the bank agreed to give him a loan based on possible future earnings. As a favor, they filed the future earnings as current, so that he would get a lower interest rate. Technically this was illegal, but the bank said that it wouldn’t press charges.With the money, he was able to free his company from government control and sell it, but it had now fallen to two and a half percent of its original value. Still, the owners went ahead making payments.

Now, however, things changed. The government got wind of the loan, and promptly charged Rubashkin for bank fraud. Except that no bank was defrauded, and the bank that gave the loan refused to press charges. This meant that the government was pressing charges on behalf of nobody. Still, he had done something illegal, something that usually got offenders about ninety days. By now he had already sat for two years.

So, he pled guilty, offering to sit voluntarily for two years, already completed. The jury accepted.

But the judge didn’t. Seizing on the ‘guilty’ part of the plea, she overturned the juries’ decision to accept his deal, instead sentencing him to twenty seven years in jail, none of it served. For a total of twenty nine.

An incredibly long time. Most people can’t project past five years. Most can’t think past ten.We are talking about thirty years. More than enough time for his children to grow up. For the people who raised him to pass on from the world.

And this year, it ended.