As Ilya noted, the Supreme Court yesterday cleared the procedural roadblocks for the Horne family, which grows and processes raisins in California, to challenge the operations of the USDA’s marketing order system as an unlawful taking of their property without compensation. The Hornes say that under the USDA’s California Raisin Marketing Order, the Raisin Administrative Committee demanded that they hand over 47 percent of their raisins to be disposed of in ways that do not compete with sales in the domestic retail raisin market, such as export programs and school lunches.
47 percent! Back in January that figure reminded me of an earlier scale of government extraction:
Max Boot, who has written a new book on the history of guerrilla movements, tells how Shamil, firebrand leader of a celebrated 19th-century Muslim insurgency in Chechnya and Dagestan, began to lose the allegiance of “many ordinary villagers who balked at his demands for annual tax payments amounting to 12 percent of their harvest.” Instead, they switched their allegiance instead to the rival Russian czar, whose demands were more modest.
If only Washington were content with the czar’s less-than-12 percent. For more on regulatory takings, check out this testimony from way back in 1995 by Cato’s own Roger Pilon before the House Judiciary Committee.
