[Pearls Before Swine]

In a brief defending the department, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli wrote that the farmers “identify no reason why the imposition of a civil penalty and other assessments for noncompliance with a regulatory scheme constitutes a taking of property without just compensation.”

That governmental attitude describes in a nutshell a lot of what is wrong in this country. Obscure regulations, written in the dark to implement unclear laws that few legislators have read or thought about, sporadically and arbitrarily enforced by faceless, unelected bureuacrats, enable precisely the sort of takings the Founders sought to prevent.

[riverrunner]

What is really madding is the other poorer producers are very willing to go along with it to protect themselves.

[RedMonqey]

It’s crazier than that. I’d never heard of this, but it sounds as if the government can create set-asides in any sort of product it wants, not just raisins. Corn, beef, wheat, soy—you name it—in the name of regulating markets for “fair” prices.

It's crazier than that.

The New Deal era law says that all products a farmer produces, even the crops he never intends to sell at market, are regulated by the government.

Why you might ask?

Because the crops he raised he will consume himself will affect the market by not buying government controlled market products.

How's that for compete government control of your food?