I was, really, feeling upbeat about changes in Washington. "New Leadership," thought I "will have an incentive to do thigns different." I should have expected that the new leadership was just as tainted as the old.
The good news in the story that has me so upset is that Republicans and Democrats were working together. The bad news is that they were doing so (1) for money, (2) in cooperation with monopoly business (3) to use the coercive legislative power of Congress (4) at the expense of an independent businessman (5) who was playing by established rules (6) to earn a good living (7) while providing lower prices (~20 cents per gallon of milk) to US customers.
Our own Senator Harry Reid was playing political games to actively punish a guy whose "crime" was selling milk cheaper than the Dairy Industry. The Washington Post has the story.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
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7 comments:
Last time I checked, bills of attainder were still prohibited by the constitution.
Perhaps a better description would be that they are forcing the man to sell milk to a conglomerate for resale to the customer (instead of directly to the customer) that has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying to do just that.
It would be like Microsoft making large campaign donations to congressmen to make sure that Apple could only distribute its computers through Microsoft's channels (and therefore, on Microsoft's terms). It's punitive in the sense that the man's business has been built around a provision that people who sell milk from their own cows aren't subject to US minimum-price rules that serve primarily to line the pockets of Big Milk.
You just wanted to use the phrase "Big Milk" in a sentence.
My unexpressed point was that although bills of attainder are prohibited by the constitution, the definition of what constitutes a bill of attainder has been drawn so narrowly that many bills that are effectively bills of attainder are now constitutionally permissible.
Of course, many changes in legislation are spurred by one creative entrepreneur who finds a way to avoid a certain regulatory mileu, so in that sense, more changes in legislation than I might think are probably initiated as a consequence of one person's actions.
Without addressing specific lobbying efforts by Big Milk with respect to the specific piece of legislation, which were clearly allocated towards seeing the legislation was passed, my only issue with the Post's reporting of the campaign contribution reflects a broader problem I have with a growing template in news reporting. The template is this: Politician A casts vote for bill that favors Corporation C. C previously donated $X to A. The implied assumption is that Donation X was the determinative factor in A's vote. I'm not saying that the donations weren't the swaying force, but its something I've noticed a lot lately.
I did want to use it. It was in the original post, but I didn't want to sound TOO snarky.
The propensity of the media to attach Big to any lobby group and turn it into a menacing sounding group amuses me.
I do think that sometimes campaign contributions are reported as a way of buying candidates, simply because money preceded a favorable vote, which is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Excellent reporting would try to prove a causal link.
Oil and Republicans is another instance. I happen to think that oil companies donate more to Republicans simply because Republicans tend to have more favorable positions with respect to oil, not because of shady promises made by Republicans to whore themselves out.
But implying a bribe is far easier. As a blogger, I like easy. As journalists, I think they should try harder.
Well said.
All in all, the economics of Big Agriculture is mind-boggling. I'm not sure what level of subsidies and price controls, or lack thereof, acheives the best result. And unless I go into the industry, I'll probably never know. I'll just continue to buy my $2.39 gallon of milk.
Dave,
Isn't this a market result? Big Milk was able to buy legislation that crushed the little guy? So should the market have made this transaction ultimately to be "efficient"?
If the mere presence of money were all it took to create a market, sure, and every market was by definition efficient, then yes.
But Congress is hardly an unfettered market - if anything, it is a legally created monopoly. Because Congress alone has the power to create legislation in the realm of interstate commerce, it has a monopoly. Therefore, it can demand high prices for bribes to pass "favorable" legislation.
If there were multiple sources of equally valid law, I suspect the rancher would have simply gone to a more favorable one, instead of trying to outbid those with substantially more resources, and the customer would have been better served in the end.
We trade Congress the monopoly power of law with the expectation that they act for the good of the country with that power. Because Congress instead uses it to line their pockets (or to entrench themselves with campaign donations), it is a far better example of why ceding as little of that authority as possible is generally a good idea.
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