Mike Explains The Commerce Clause For Organic Dummies

What Came First?  The Organic Chicken or the Organic Egg…..

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “You could say under the Commerce Clause power that Congress ought to intervene and say: Look, if you make eggs, we’re having a free egg trade zone.  If it clucks like a chicken and looks like a chicken and lays an egg, you can sell it in all 50 states.  But just like with automobile insurance, that state is free to say: Fine, you can sell them in here.  We are going to say that in this state, it is illegal to sell an egg that is under the size of a diameter of whatever, that you cannot prove has been grown under the following conditions.  That is a municipal law to me.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  John in Minnesota is next.  Hello, John.

Caller John:  Hello.  I just wanted to see if you’d heard about the issue with the California egg producers and the law they passed in California for giving the hens more space and the lawsuits being challenged against that.

Mike:  No, I haven’t.  This is a California law?

Caller John:  Yes, it is.  It just goes to what’s wrong with this whole entire country.  We’ve got the Republican Steve King trying to insert an amendment to the vainglorious farm bill to prevent California from passing a law that would force other states’ egg producers to do certain things in order to sell their eggs in the State of California.  Then upon that failing, we have five states that have now joined lawsuits that are challenging California’s ability to regulate them.  If they want to sell their eggs in the State of California, they’re saying that’s not fair because they’re regulating how they do it, not even thinking about what is California’s right as a state to be able to say: If you’re going to do business in our state, this is how you’re going to do it.

Mike:  And if Californians starve to death because they can’t grow enough eggs, then tough boobies.

Caller John:  Exactly.  So in California we have a Democrat who is defending against that lawsuit saying exactly that, that this is California’s right to regulate how eggs are going to be raised and sold in the State of California.  It just baffles me why as soon as money is involved, we’re going to throw our principles out the window whether we’re Republican, Democrat, whether it’s our state, another state.  We can’t have California telling us how we’re going to raise our chickens because we should be able to sell our eggs in California.

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Mike:  Where was Steve King when California was passing its requirements for what kind of fuel can be sold in California, what additives have to be in the fuel?  Eric’s home state of Maryland, what kind of additives have to be in the gasoline that’s sold in the Maryland, that’s a state regulation.  You can’t just bring regular unleaded gas in there.  You have to add this MTBE crap, or you used to.  I don’t know if you still do.  New Jersey, after Hurricane Sandy hit, Chris Christie had to ask the legislature for permission to issue an executive order so that he could tell the tankers that had gasoline: Look, we were idiots to make this stupid law that said only this law that has this additive in it — of course, the people that make the additive paid for the law.  He had to issue an executive order so that gasoline could be sold in New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy hit so that they would have gas.  The precedent for states proscribing certain things that cannot be sold — just like in the State of Alabama a couple years ago.  Alabama became a laughingstock because it said that its citizens could not import phallic devices into the state.  People made fun of it, but that’s Alabama’s prerogative.  So that’s absolutely California’s prerogative.

Caller John:  And interestingly enough, Alabama is one of the states joining the lawsuit to say that California can’t tell us we can’t sell our eggs in the state.

Mike:  Did Alabama tell the porn producers in California that they couldn’t sell their wares in Alabama?  I believe they did.

Caller John:  It’s just hypocrisy, and everyone wonders why Mordor on the Potomac is growing and growing.  The attorney generals in the states and governors in the states are all signing on to say: Yeah, the federal government should be in charge of all this.

Mike:  You could say under the Commerce Clause power that Congress ought to intervene and say: Look, if you make eggs, we’re having a free egg trade zone.  If it clucks like a chicken and looks like a chicken and lays an egg, you can sell it in all 50 states.  But just like with automobile insurance, that state is free to say: Fine, you can sell them in here.  We are going to say that in this state, it is illegal to sell an egg that is under the size of a diameter of whatever, that you cannot prove has been grown under the following conditions.  That is a municipal law to me.  That is for either the locality or the state to make.  I think it’s kind of stupid myself.  What they’re trying to do is protect organic egg growers in California is what it sounds like to me, which is perfectly fine.  Why do the other states have such a problem with it?  Because they have to pretend or make it appear as though they are amenable to the dairy interest in their own states.

Caller John:  Exactly.  It comes down to money.  California is the biggest market for eggs.  Iowa is the biggest producer for eggs.  You have a Republican governor in Iowa and a Republican senator in Iowa that are all saying: We should be able to make money off this.

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Mike:  Let me try one more stab at explaining this because I’m going to get a lot of hate mail on this, too.  I’m going to get loaded up with hate mail today.  To explain the Commerce Clause properly and using contemporary examples to explain it — contemporary meaning at the time the Constitution was ratified — the way it was understood was the actual sale or transportation across the state line, that the state cannot throw up an impediment to it, can’t tariff it, can’t tax it, can’t impost it, can’t duty it.  It has to allow the sale of it.

However, Congress cannot mandate or control or have any control over the manufacture, the production process of it.  So once it is produced, and once it is then in transit and is now commerce, that’s the beginning of the commerce power that Congress or the federal government would have.  They would have no power then to tell anyone that they have to manufacture a certain type of egg that has to be sold, even though they do, and they do the same thing with cheese.  So Congress is already in error.

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That would mean then that that power over the regulation of manufacture was left in the hands of the state.  To me, California is free to say: You can sell your eggs here but they have to be this kind of egg.  That, to me, is a legitimate federalist function or a legitimate case that a federalist would have made in 1789 if the same scenario were to have occurred.  I hope that helps, folks.  So once the good has left the place where it was made, now it can fall under Article I, Section 8, Commerce Clause power.  That’s the easiest way to explain it.

End Mike Church Show Transcript