Posted on 06/16/2013 12:55:46 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
Since the grim days of the Great Depression, raisin farmers in California’s fabled San Joaquin Valley have raised their grapes under a food-regulatory regime that forces them to hand over a portion of their crop to the government, often without getting anything for it. The U.S. Supreme Court took a step, a big one, on Monday to give raisins something to dance about.
Like many New Deal programs, raisin rationing was instituted under the foolish belief that manipulating the market to raise the price of raisins would make more money for the growers and improve the valley’s economic health. Hence, the Raisin Administrative Committee, a cartel that dictates how much of the crop will be taken each year to reduce supply. In 2003, the government board dictated that 47 percent of the raisins grown that year would be confiscated with nothing for the growers. That was too much to swallow for Marvin and Laura Horne, farmers and processors in Fresno. Millions of pounds of raisins became the “fee” farmers had to pay to stay in business. The raisin board justified the scheme spending some of the loot on an advertising campaign. (You might have heard about it through the grapevine.)
The Hornes refused to hand over their raisins, calling the program “a tool for grower bankruptcy, poverty and involuntary servitude.” For refusing to go along with the scheme, the Hornes were fined $650,000, equivalent to the cash value of their raisins. They sued, arguing that the raisin law took their property without just compensation . . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Our government at work.
... Rather than handle the underlying constitutional issue, SCOTUS instead focuses on the venue issue, overturns that, and sends it back so that another few years can pass before the issue is once again before SCOTUS to argue the same exact case?
Good old running out the clock judicial action there. Hey, if we send this back to the 9th, they can try to twist the constitution into a pretzel, and maybe it might be back here. But in the mean time, we can give this outdated law another half decade of life, steal more production and go have drinks while the decision is being read!
Unbelievable that this has survived this long.
And it took a Supreme Court case to tell the nation about a practice that few would have suspected even existed.
Bad things are bad because... they fly in the face of God’s love. A God that wishes to bless everyone. Theft, which this comprised, is one of those bad things.
Let me give you a hint. Raisin farmer register and vote Democratic. How do I know? I married the farmer’s only daughter is how. If I named names, Jim Rob and others from the Valley would recognize them from the newspapers. The raisin farmers who are in on the scam like it a lot. That said, there is no good reason why this form of criminal association is legitimate/legal.
Sounds like something Marx, and several big government loving Freepers, would support.
With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.
One more example of why the United States must end all subsidies to farmers.
Seems to me the raisen grower marketing board screwed up.
“Good old running out the clock judicial action there.”
These worthless bastards ( and bastardettes) on the SCOTUS are the biggest disgrace of all!
I worked in a Del Monte peach cannery while attending UC Berkeley ( yeah, I know, I’ve spent a lifetime trying to expunge my record). We had a USDA “inspector” in the cannery “diverting” fruit to the waste bin “in order to keep the price of peaches up.” The idea that with people around the world needing food, we engage in these practices is simply disgraceful!
Name begins with an M, doesn’t it.
Well it is definitely unconstitutional.
As for being outdated it has always surprised me that these federally instituted cartels hadn’t been struck down decades ago.
But for most of the last 80 years these laws did have certain benefits; only so many farms were permitted to grow raisins almonds and so on.
So I guess at long last the government reached to far for this farmer and he rebelled against the system.
With any luck that dumb twit might inadvertently get an argument going to would result in overturning Wickard v Filburn, and great swaths of federal bureaucracy will be at risk of losing their claimed constitutional authority to exist.
Actually ends with “ian.” Family settled around Del Rey. Some branches of the family active in Sun Maid - others independent packers. That’s enough dot connecting for the locals. ;>)
And don’t forget peanuts and sugar. After all, if Jimmah Cahtah had had to actually grow peanuts to make a profit we might have been spared the specter of him as POTUS and then as an all-knowing ex-POTUS. And without a sugar subsidy, Puerto Rico would either become an independent nation or our fifty-first state rather than a commonwealth in which people are entitled to benefits without paying fedearl income taxes!!
What you’re describing as a bug, is a feature to some. I’m with you though. Limiting supply artificially through coercive means is not what we ought to be doing. Time to end the cartel and farm subsidies in general. We do quite enough with water projects, roads and other capital expenditures without direct payments for growing (or not!) crops. For God’s sake, the WW2 mohair subsidies are still in effect.
I just E-mailed a buddy of mine that is from Fresno who’s brother is still running the family raisin farm. I would like to see what he says about this.
Takes just a few hundred people to regulate the ‘marketing board’ system. My understanding is that most of the players are in the private sector.
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