More JBS charges
The Brazil-based meatpacker that provides and purchases the more than 6,000 swine raised by C&H Hog Farms in the Buffalo National River watershed is in trouble after police say it was caught giving payoffs to inspectors and politicians to allow the sale of spoiled meat.
As a result of a two-year investigation, the European Commission says it’s carefully monitoring the JBS meat corporation and another major meatpacker it alleges were criminally shelling out cash to influence Brazilian officials.
The corporation’s JBS USA subsidiary purchased Cargill Inc.’s U.S. pork business—which includes the Mount Judea hog factory—for $1.45 billion in November 2015. That was about three years after Cargill was pivotal in launching and supporting the privately owned C&H facility that our state officials so quickly and quietly permitted into our sacred Buffalo watershed.
In Brazil, a judge accused the Ministry of Agriculture of selecting inspectors who approved substandard meat for market. A two-year police investigation alleges JBS and another major meatpacker in that country also channeled bribes to two of Brazil’s major political parties, including that of the Brazilian president. News accounts say dozens of arrest warrants have been issued.
One Brazilian investigator said during a new conference that the meatpackers were using chemicals to improve the appearance and smell of expired meats, and that good meat supposedly was mixed with bad, and water and a gluten-free flour also added as a disguise.
The investigation also reportedly revealed that schoolchildren in southern Brazil were being fed “outdated, rotten and many times cancerous” meats to benefit the financial interests of a “crime gang.”
As if these allegations weren’t bad enough, in 2016 the JBS chairman and eight other company officials were charged with financial crimes involving loans.
It’s troublesome to me that the international corporate contractors behind our state’s large swine factory are in trouble back home for alleged financial crimes and bribes to allow rotten meat into markets and schools. Officials within the European Union were inflamed enough by the charges to halt meat exports from JBS and another Brazilian company called BRF.
While there’s no connection between what happens in Brazil and the factory at Mount Judea, this company’s reported practices naturally catch my attention and that of others across Arkansas.
No Comey comfort
After listening to this week’s congressional hearings on alleged wiretapping and Russian involvement with our national candidates, I don’t know what to think about FBI Director James Comey. It was troubling enough when Comey bungled the Hillary Clinton email investigation in more ways than one. I can’t imagine a more unprofessional and ill-conceived way to have handled that in light of both the timing and findings.
And now I watch Comey testifying that he’s found no evidence within his agency of the alleged wiretapping of then-candidate Donald Trump. My first reaction: What’s the real truth here?
I no longer feel I can trust in the man’s words. Obviously neither can South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy. To me, Comey’s credibility has been tainted to the point where I can’t determine if what he says is honest, or politicized blather.
Trust is crucial. We shouldn’t have a director of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency sporting such self-inflicted baggage.
Free of intimidation
Claiming constitutional prohibition, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, based in notoriously liberal Madison, Wis., has threatened school districts in the largely conservative cities of Harrison and Springdale if board members don’t stop offering a prayer before meetings.
“It is beyond the scope of a public school board to schedule or conduct prayer as part of its meetings,” the group’s staff attorney wrote in a letter. “If the board continues to pray, it will subject the school district to unnecessary liability and potential financial strain.” The lawyer wrote that forcing people who aren’t religious to participate can be intimidating.
So far, the group’s own intimidation tactic appears effective since both boards have stopped their established rituals of offering a prayer before each session begins. The districts says they are reviewing legal options before deciding how to proceed.
Hank Thompson, reigning patriarch of the morning coffee group at Harrison’s TownHouse Cafe, knows how to solve this problem: “If the board members want to pray to their individual deity, do so before calling their board into formal session. Better still, open the meeting with a few seconds of silence, allowing each individual member and attendee to do as they please with those moments. Leave intent out of that time altogether.”
For that matter, members might gather for prayer before they even enter the room.
I’m not sure the Supreme Court has ruled on the question of prayer at school board meetings or at high school football games. Being one who detests intimidation, I’d be tempted to find a bright and ambitious attorney willing to take a pro bono case for a constitutional resolution.