It would probably behoove you not to make sweeping statements, even based on personal experience in one particular archdiocese. If a priest is going around simulating a sacrament, using invalid matter for the Eucharist, and pulling the wool over parishioners' eyes about it, then they should absolutely be reported to the ordinary. If the ordinary doesn't care, which may be the case for you, then someone in the Roman Curia will definitely care. Of course, it may take the Dicastery for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments a long time to investigate, come to a decision, and issue a statement/sanctions, especially if the ordinary does not cooperate and resists any of this. But they will. I assure you that the validity of sacraments matters very much to people who matter.

I mean, can you imagine the turmoil and unrest in a Church that would happen if the faithful couldn't depend on the validity of our sacraments? Imagine if, at every Mass you attend, you have to second-guess the priest and peek at what kind of bread is being used, and whether that bread tastes like oil or sugar, and whether the priest is using proper wine, and many thousands of Catholics thrown into confusion about whether we had received the Body & Blood of Jesus or whether it had just been deliberately and cruelly simulated in front of us? Imagine the uproar that would occur! That is definitely something that Church officials don't want to deal with, because it shakes the foundations of the faith. No, validity is a very real concern for anyone who wishes to keep the peace among the faithful.

Regarding leavened bread: leavening altar bread in the Roman Rite is illicit but it will not be invalid matter. It is because our Eastern Catholic brethren very much use leavened bread, which if it's valid for one, it's valid for all. Likewise, a Byzantine Catholic priest using unleavened bread would be acting illicitly, and probably get in a lot of trouble just from his parishioners, but it would still be a valid Eucharist.

Now, personally I definitely have seen priests and even provinces of religious orders where validity and liceity perhaps did not matter much at all. I was part of a community that used glass "chalices" (illicit), they eschewed crazy things like chasubles, and they used "gender-neutral" pronouns for God. Now they usually did use real altar bread and real wine for the Eucharist, but I'm fairly sure I saw a home-baked loaf thing used once. The way they played around with the words of the liturgy was disturbing to me, and honestly I determined that several of those priests really did not believe in the True Presence with the reprehensible way they treated the Eucharistic elements, post-consecration.

And this may be the case with your Chicagoan priests: they don't believe in the Real Presence, so why does it matter if they attempt to consecrate unfermented grape juice? (By the way, just looking at Ritz Cracker ingredients online, I'd say they're also invalid, due to lots of sugars, salt, oils, soy lechitin, and other gross stuff -- not even fit for human consumption, I'd say.) I'd say it is very common for rank-and-file priests to not care much about their vocation or for the rights of the faithful. But the faithful have a right to a properly-celebrated, licit liturgy with valid matter, and Rome tends to uphold those rights, but bishops have a lot of ordinary power in their own dioceses, and so if the bishop is obstructive or drags his heels, then Rome may have a real difficult time championing the rights of the faithful.

The Church is not "some other Catholicism" that "rejects Nehi grape", I assure you that it is the other way around. No faithful Catholic in his right mind will tell you that unfermented grape soda can be valid matter for the Eucharist; it was simply the fact that you had a series of heretical priests, and they may have been given ample cover by their bishop. There is not "tradcath" radical hardlining here: it's just simple doctrine.