Under the licensing agreement, the Agriculture Department keeps 60 percent of the revenues and the California Table Grape Commission keeps the remaining 40 percent.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/11/26/175582/grape-growers-can-sue-usda-as.html#storylink=cpy

So why would anyone grow them to begin with? Talk about highway robbery.

power grab by the table grape commission…our bureaucracy knows no bounds

menacetosobriety on November 27, 2012 at 3:45 PM

I don’t have the time or the inclination to look it up, but I’ll bet ya’ll a grand the “director” of the table grape association makes about $150k a year and has a staff and budget that would pay for a small country’s annual expenditures somewhere…all to control effin grape’s…..

now take that times about 1000 bogus agencies just like it and tell me we need to raise taxes?????????????????????????????

Thieving basta*ds….

BobMbx on November 27, 2012 at 3:49 PM

Sure the taxpayers pay for any lawsuits against the government. Do you support businesses just letting every fed agency getting away with what they do and just have those cave? I sure don’t. I would rather pay for this than a car that catches on fire that costs the taxpayers 80+K to make and sold for 40+K we fund at gov.motors! We are going to get it one way or the other, big bro has seen to it!
Do I like it, not one single bit do I!
L

Grape growers can now sue the USDA

Yea…. But can they do Math? A little ridiculous gibberish.

a convoluted bureaucracy chock-full of a bunch of miniscule, highly specific rules and regulations that serve to benefit particular producers,

Sigh. Minuscule, please.

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/miniscule.html

Taxpayers get hosed!

Well at least the SC did this correct!
L

letget on November 27, 2012 at 3:39 PM

When the USDA loses a lawsuit, who ends up coughing up the award money?

Us.

This ruling will simply cause the USDA to add a line item to its budget request each year: “Money we’re going to lose in lawsuits”

…the high court declined to review a lower court’s ruling that waived USDA’s customary immunity from lawsuits…

wow, Cesar Chavez lives. Like Pigford, another massive payout through the agency that has unlimited resources to give, too many clients to count, and no one to take responsibility as the effort to proceed with redistribution of wealth hums along.

“It’s part of an effort by growers to curtail the power grab by the table grape commission,”

power grab by the table grape commission…our bureaucracy knows no bounds

http://www.freeenterprise.com/regulations/raisin-hell-supreme-court

And for the last 80 years, the federal government has required raisin producers to “give thanks” for the privilege of selling their raisins nationally by requiring them to fork over up to half of their raisins – for free. A lawsuit raising a constitutional challenge to the program has now made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The case is Horne v. Department of Agriculture.

The program, operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has a rather Orwellian-sounding name – the “Raisin Marketing Order.” In a nutshell, under this program, every year, as a condition for “letting” farmers sell their raisin crops in interstate commerce, the federal government has taken up to 47% of the farmers’ raisins – often for no payment at all, or below the cost of producing the raisins. The program has its origins in Great Depression efforts to fix the prices of agricultural crops. Don’t care much for raisins? Similar programs cover a variety of other agricultural products, such as walnuts, almonds, prunes, tart cherries – and cranberries!

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/11/19/175089/grapes-and-raisins-of-wrath-supreme.html

Food and Drug is one of the worst offenders, but they all should be sued.

But in Keynesian economics, which dominates government ideology, free trade isn’t always the best outcome for a nation. Using these mechanisms, you can manipulate the net national welfare figure while protecting producers. So long as the net national welfare comes out positive, the USDA doesn’t care about the average consumer.