New York State Attorney General Letitia James has a beef with beef.
This week James sued the JBS USA Food Company, the U.S. subsidiary of the world’s largest beef producer, accusing it of “fraudulent and illegal business activities” and demanding “disgorgement of all profits and ill-gotten gains.”
Disregard the inflammatory language. James’ lawsuit is frivolous — a mere publicity stunt.
James is using the state’s legal apparatus to punish individuals and industries unpopular with the Left — sacrificing the rule of law in the process.
If she can make the Empire State into a living hell for beef producers, she can do it to any other industry. Her politically motivated legal attacks will scare companies out of New York. Your business or job could be next.
Already, James has used the powers of her office to go after Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association. Now she’s targeting a beef producer. What’s next? Furriers, car dealerships, Big Pharma, pro-life groups, friends of Israel, companies that donate to Republicans?
Most of James’ 38-page legal complaint is a rant against beef, not JBS specifically. “Beef has the highest total greenhouse gas emissions of any major food commodity, and beef production is linked to large-scale deforestation, especially in the Amazon rainforest.”
New York is a long way from the Brazilian rainforests or even JBS’s U.S. operations in Colorado. So how does she justify a New York lawsuit? She accuses JBS of fraud for telling New York consumers that the company aspires to be “Net Zero by 2040.”
The fraud charge is ridiculous. Labelling chuck steak as filet mignon would be fraud because it would misrepresent the product being sold. But saying you aspire to be net zero 20 years from now is not fraud.
Half the world’s 2,000 largest publicly listed corporations state that they aspire to be net zero by 2040, but very few have concrete plans on how to get there, according to Net Zero Tracker. The technology hasn’t been developed to do it affordably. An aspiration is not a legal commitment.
The complaint makes clear that James’ goal isn’t to get JBS to refine its advertising. She wants to put beef producers out of business.
Citing a United Nations report, James argues that reducing emissions “cannot be eliminated through existing or anticipated technology. Instead, scientists point to the need to reduce production of and demand for ruminant meat, including beef.”
James complains that “the JBS group plans to do the opposite. The JBS Group forecasts increased demand for its products over the coming decades, and it intends to meet that demand.”
So what is JBS’s crime? Growing, instead of caving to the Left and closing down.
James’ lawsuit is a warning to businesses not to expect impartial justice. She’s targeting the politically disfavored for extinction. It will mean publicity for her but millions of dollars in defense costs for her victims.
Where is the New York State Bar Association, which pledges to uphold the integrity of our legal system and discipline lawyers who bring frivolous lawsuits? Rule 3.1 of the NYSBA Code of Conduct defines a frivolous lawsuit as one having “no reasonable purpose except to harass or maliciously injure.” That’s the JBS lawsuit to a tee. Shame on the NYSBA for lacking the spine to denounce it.
Since 2019, hundreds of businesses, including major financial institutions, have fled New York because of high taxes, regulations and crime. James’ legal vendettas will turn the business community’s exodus into a stampede.
Meanwhile, the city is suffering a surge in pedestrian assaults, subways attacks and retail theft. Instead of suing JBS, James should be calling for the repeal of the state’s insane bail “reform” and the removal of pro-criminal district attorneys like Alvin Bragg.
Can James be removed from office? Technically, yes — by a two-thirds vote of the state Senate, on the recommendation of the governor. But in New York’s one-party rule, that won’t happen.
It’s up to the legal community to stand up to James and demand the impartial, apolitical administration of justice. Without it, New York’s economy cannot survive.
New York has produced legal greats like Benjamin Cardozo and Thurgood Marshall. Don’t let James trash the rule of law here and turn the Empire State into a banana republic.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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“fraudulent and illegal business activities” and demanding “disgorgement of all profits and ill-gotten gains.”,,,,,this from another of the paid Democrat Socialist Saturnalian operatives who seek to eat their own children as did the Greek Titan Cronus, whom the Romans called Saturn, eating one of his children out of fear of a prophecy by Gaea that one of his children would overthrow him. Trump is just the beginning of their plans for American fratricide of any and all opponent strength creators beginning with the very strength delivering food that enables them to take on the Titanic Treasonous Democrat Trifecta of tyranny of the Biden, Obama, Clinton crime family administrations bent on the theft in social redistribution, of the very food we eat. It is these vomitous venomous victims of their own jealousy and fears of others capable of making a living sans government interference, that drives them to fits of disgorging the fruits of American bred successful life nourishing ability to self-govern themselves as individual run companies or individual lives, where if government disappeared tomorrow, their lives and fortunes would not miss a heartbeat, unlike those socially dependent woke weasels who cannot bend over to tie their own shoes without fear of being government assaulted from the rear.
Jesus told his disciples to “Feed my Sheep” and most productive country domiciled individual American family beef producers use fresh wholesome beef protein to fulfill that which a creative God has placed into their minds as their part of the program. Between the last 2 weeks of 2023 I had 9 Angus calves born,,,,Christy on Christmas, Sparkler on New Years day, Beefcake, Butkus, Blackjack, Bandit, Bruiser, Taras and Taurus. Each calve will grow enough to feed one American for over a year. The cow flatulence fearing Democrats can only offer ground earthworms inside Arby offered beef substitutes, or Tofu that do not feed his sheep, just create more sheep to fearfully, not fearlessly vote in up-coming elections. Thanks to Biden economics, the price of hay to feed cattle puts most beef producers into a break- even operation if lucky, but the inner conscience God planted instructions to feed his sheep overcomes all attempts by the armies of darkness to put us out of the business of doing God’s will. – Amen
EASY SOLUTION IS all companies, completely and UTTERLY MOVE out of NY. FOR GOOD.
Can James be removed from office? Technically, yes — by a two-thirds vote of the state Senate, on the recommendation of the governor. But in New York’s one-party rule, that won’t happen.
Are people fools because they are Democrats or are they Democrats because they are fools??
Why would any Fool want to serve the self-proclaimed Democrat gods??
THEIR brains are so rotted, its hard to see which came first..
It’s the democrat versin of Mad Cow disease, brought on by consuming the brains of guys like Joe, just like the deer herds up north that are coming down with mad cow disease from eating cattle feed laced with ground infected cow brains.