{"id":5356,"date":"2013-05-13T08:39:14","date_gmt":"2013-05-13T12:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=5356"},"modified":"2024-09-11T23:41:08","modified_gmt":"2024-09-12T03:41:08","slug":"will-supreme-court-end-usda-dictatorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/13\/will-supreme-court-end-usda-dictatorship\/","title":{"rendered":"Wash. Times: Will Supreme Court End USDA Dictatorship?"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

Washington Times<\/a>, May 13, 2003<\/p>\n

BOVARD: Dancing to the beat of the grapevine<\/strong>
\nThe raisin famers seek servitude liberation<\/em><\/p>\n

Does the secretary of agriculture need unlimited power over farmers to protect them against themselves? The Supreme Court might finally settle this issue in an imminent decision on one of USDA\u2019s most bizarre regimes.<\/p>\n

When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933, his secretary of agriculture, Henry Wallace, and others urged him to appoint a temporary \u201cfarm dictator.\u201d Congress quickly enacted legislation that vested vast power in the secretary of agriculture and his deputies. Four years later, Congress enacted the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act, which authorized creation of marketing boards to issue orders to forcibly boost prices.<\/p>\n

Marketing orders were based on the New Deal philosophy of \u201cmanaged abundance\u201d \u2014 prosperity through \u201cuniversal monopoly and universal scarcity.\u201d Americans quickly realized that it was not in the public interest to give private industry a federal license to conspire and gouge their customers. But such prerogatives have been retained by USDA marketing committees.<\/p>\n

The Raisin Administrative Committee, one of the most powerful boards, can confiscate up to half of raisin farmers\u2019 harvests with little or no compensation. The feds perpetually invoke the danger of surpluses to nullify raisin farmers\u2019 property rights.<\/p>\n

The committee fined Marvin Horne, a 67-year-old raisin farmer in Fresno, Calif., almost $700,000 after he refused to surrender control of 47 percent of his harvest. Mr. Horne, who labels the raisin regulations as \u201cinvoluntary servitude,\u201d fought the feds all the way to the Supreme Court, which heard arguments on the case in late March.<\/p>\n

The case seemed to shock the court\u2019s liberals. Many, if not most, justices sounded clueless about how far USDA\u2019s iron fist stretches. Justice Stephen G. Breyer declared, \u201cI can\u2019t believe that Congress wanted the taxpayers to pay for a program that\u2019s going to mean they have to pay higher prices as consumers.\u201d Justice Elena Kagan suggested that this could be \u201cthe world\u2019s most-outdated law.\u201d Justice Sonia Sotomayor sounded so confused by the case\u2019s administrative and legal tangle that she was in danger of spinning out of her chair.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration and USDA insist that, even though the government commandeers raisin farmers\u2019 harvest, there is no \u201ctaking\u201d because the seizure drives up the price of the remaining raisins. They invoked a federal appeals court ruling that the government need not pay compensation because Mr. Horne and his wife \u201cvoluntarily choose to send their raisins into the stream of interstate commerce.\u201d<\/p>\n

But since when did state lines nullify property rights? The fact that a business\u2019s products are sold beyond its own neighborhood should not automatically turn the producer into bureaucratic cannon fodder. Or should we presume that USDA is like a medieval robber baron, entitled to seize half of the produce that passes near his fortified checkpoint? Brian Leighton, one of Mr. Horne\u2019s lawyers, noted, \u201cThieves, murderers and rapists have far greater rights of due process and speedy appeal than do farmers regulated under USDA marketing orders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federal marketing orders exemplify the quasi-covert nature of much of contemporary government coercion. If USDA sent armed agents into every grocery store in the country and arrested shoppers who sought to buy too many California raisins, USDA would be universally denounced as God\u2019s prize idiots. Instead, the government imposes its controls directly on California farms and fruit handlers \u2014 and few Americans recognize how their government is thwarting the bounty of the nation\u2019s farms.<\/p>\n

It is unclear why the Obama administration feels obliged to defend the raisin regime. Perhaps the administration\u2019s masterminds presume that this is another government program that cannot possible be as stupid as it looks. Or perhaps the fact that the program is long-established proves that it deserves all the power it has seized.<\/p>\n

Many liberals have remained totally ignorant on USDA supply controls because they have scant curiosity about how government actually uses its power. Because they presume that government is benevolent, they need not sweat the specifics of its good deeds. But it is in the grisly details where Americans\u2019 rights and liberties are increasingly shredded.<\/p>\n

There is no evidence that federal supply controls are a cornucopia for farmers. Raisin growers have been whipsawed by fluctuating prices in the past dozen years, and many farmers have simply given up on the raisin business. The program has continued largely as a result of USDA\u2019s version of agoraphobia \u2014 boundless dread of free markets. But there is no excuse for restricting supply of one commodity that should not apply to restricting supply of all commodities. The same market mechanisms that suffice for radishes, raspberries and rhubarbs could serve raisins just fine.<\/p>\n

The government should no longer be permitted to condemn harvests to prevent farmers from committing suicide. The raisin case provides an excellent chance for the Supreme Court to signal that mindless administrative tyranny will no longer be tolerated.<\/p>\n

Tagline: James Bovard is the author most recently of a new e-book memoir, \u201cPublic Policy Hooligan<\/a>\u201d (Sixth Street Books, 2012).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Washington Times, May 13, 2003 BOVARD: Dancing to the beat of the grapevine The raisin famers seek servitude liberation Does the secretary of agriculture need unlimited power over farmers to protect them against themselves? The Supreme Court might finally settle this issue in an imminent decision on one of USDA\u2019s most bizarre regimes. When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[149,7,213,45,165,225,226,14,24],"class_list":["post-5356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agriculture","tag-dictatorship","tag-farm-subsidy","tag-freedom","tag-paternalism","tag-raisin","tag-regulation","tag-rule-of-law","tag-supreme-court"],"yoast_head":"\nWash. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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