Americans have been fortunate to pay less for food than any other country. We are blessed with good soil, smart farmers, abundant energy, and an “agricultural system” that gets food from “farm to fork” efficiently.

The percentage of our income spent on food has been declining constantly for decades. Until now. Yes, we are now spending over 11% on food, the most in 30 years.

In New York, Attorney General Letitia James is determined that her state residents will pay even higher prices, especially for meat. As you know, she succeeded in attacking Donald Trump’s family business. Most New Yorkers didn’t care because they don’t like him. (That $400 million ruling might be overturned in Federal Court on appeal.)

Now Attorney General James has moved on to tackling JBS, the big meat supplier. Why? Is the quality of their meat substandard? Are they ripping off consumers? No, she attacked JBS because they are not reducing their “carbon footprint” fast enough to suit her. The fact is that American farmers are producing more pounds of meat per ‘unit of carbon’ (whatever that is) than ever before. She says JBS promised to have a carbon footprint of zero by 2040 and she doesn’t believe they can do it.

You probably know that animals on our farms and ranches eat grass, corn and other plants to produce meat. Plants “inhale” carbon dioxide from the air and “exhale” oxygen. Without plants, we would die from a lack of oxygen.

Leticia James is wrong if she thinks a person standing at the meat case selecting T-bone steaks for a big family celebration is going to suddenly change their mind because the climate might be warmer in 15 years. And they definitely will not buy a dozen boxes of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes instead. Given a choice, most Americans, including New Yorkers, prefer to consume their corn after it has been processed into meat, not Flakes.

As you know, Laken Riley, a nursing student, was murdered in Athens, Georgia by an illegal immigrant. He had already committed other crimes and was still roaming freely around the country because of sanctuary cities. Instead of demanding an end to sanctuary status for criminal immigrants, most Democrat office holders say that one murder (Laken’s) is not a reason to change policies. I happen to have three granddaughters attending three different universities. How many more such murders by a criminal immigrant will it take for Democrats to change their minds?

As Will Rogers wrote, “There is nothing as easy as denouncing. It don’t take much to see that something is wrong, but it does take some eyesight to see what will put it right again.” (WA #657, July 28, 1935). Let’s hope there are enough leaders with good ‘eyesight’ and common sense to eliminate sanctuaries for illegal immigrants.

President Biden will deliver a State of the Union speech this Thursday. Here is Will Rogers on this speech in 1930, “One of the few stipulated duties of the President is that every once in a while, he delivers a message to Congress to tell them the ‘Condition of the Country.’ This message as I say is to Congress, the rest of the country know the condition of the country, for they live in it and are a part of it. But the Senators and Congressmen being in Washington all the time have no idea what is going on in America. So the President has to tell ’em.” (WA #371, Feb. 2, 1930)

President Biden has been advised to keep it short because he doesn’t have much to brag about. Don’t be surprised if he runs out of accomplishments in 10 minutes, but spends an hour bragging about what he intends to do when he’s re-elected.

Breaking News! Nikki Haley won her first GOP Primary election, in Washington, DC tonight. I’m guessing that five Republicans cast votes and she got three of ‘em.

And earlier today, the great basketball player for Iowa, Caitlin Clark set a new major college scoring record, passing Pete Maravich’s 3667 in 3 years at LSU.