California raisin growers defeat the federal government's attempt to seize their crop and their rights.
The order in Horne, et al. v. Department of Agriculture turned on its head the idea that the government can seize an entire “bundle” of property rights, yet avoid classifying that seizure as a taking as long as they allow the original owners to retain some manner of interest in the property. In 2001, Marvin and Laura Horne challenged that very premise when they decided to withhold portions of their raisin crop that the government mandated be relinquished to the Raisin Administrative Committee (which is indeed a real thing); the Hornes were fined almost a million dollars for their transgressions, but they fought back, arguing that the Committee’s seizure of even a portion of an individual farmer’s crop as a condition of participating in the market constituted an unconstitutional taking.
It's simply too bad that these growers had to take the time and money to go all the way to the Supreme Court to keep what is already theirs. Is it too much to ask the bureaucracy to self regulate themselves, and not strive constantly to over reach and attempt the theft of our rights?
If they were a private industry "Raisen Board", they would be called a cartel and jailed for price fixing.
ReplyDeleteClose them all down. Them, the milk cartel, the meat cartel, and anything else that looks like a duck and quacks like a duck. Let the free market be free and let the market decide how many raisens to grow.
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