fagin@ucbvax.ARPA (Barry Steven Fagin) (04/04/85)
Last January, supply controls on navel oranges were suspended indefinitely. For those not familiar with navel orange production in this country, a cartel of growers (dominated by Sunkist) has the power to set weekly and annual sales limits through a mechanism called the Marketing Order. Acting through the USDA, this cartel effectively sets prices and quantities of navel oranges, leaving consumers out in the cold. (Notice that without the USDA, perpetrating this kind of thing would be a bit more difficult). Carl Pescosolido, owner of the Sequoia Orange Company, has been fighting these controls for six years. A member of the Council for a Competitive Economy, a libertarian free market think tank, Pescosolido believed that he should be allowed to sell as many of his oranges as he wished for whatever price he could get. As a result, he has been sued by the USDA for exceeding his production quota, and even for giving away too many of his oranges to charity. What nonsense. Anyway, production quotas on navel oranges were suspended indefinitely by the USDA last January, largely due to the efforts of the Capital Legal Foundation on behalf of Pescosolido. Located in Washington D.C, CLF describes itself as "a libertarian public interest law firm", and has sued the USDA as well as challenged the constitutionality of the marketing orders in the Supreme Court. Go CLF! --Barry -- Barry Fagin @ University of California, Berkeley