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Supreme Demolition For The Raisin Racketby James BovardFuture of Freedom Dec. 31, 2015 |
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 The December 2013 Future of Freedom contained my article “A Supreme Rebuff for USDA’s Ruinous Raisin Regime.” The legal case surrounding that controversy kept percolating in the courts for another 18 months. The Obama administration won a big victory in federal appeals court last year before getting squashed by the Supreme Court this past June. The Supremes put an end to federal raisin racketeering, but private-property rights remain in political crosshairs across the nation. This case began in 2002, when the Agriculture Department’s Raisin Administrative Committee prohibited producers from selling 47 percent of their raisin harvest in order to drive up raisin prices as part of a “reserve” scheme. The following year, the Raisin Committee decreed that producers must forfeit 30 percent of their harvest to the Raisin Committee. Marvin and Laura Horne, raisin growers in Kerman, California, refused to submit, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) slapped them with more than $700,000 in fines. The Raisin Administrative Committee was empowered by a 1930s-era law that permitted seizing farmers’ harvests to protect them from gluts. Read More |
