http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/09/AR2006120900925.htmlHarvesting Cash The Milk Lobby Strikes Back
In the summer of 2003, shoppers in Southern California began getting a break on the price of milk.
A maverick dairyman named Hein Hettinga started bottling his own milk and selling it for as much as 20 cents a gallon less than the competition, exercising his right to work outside the rigid system that has controlled U.S. milk production for almost 70 years. Soon the effects were rippling through the state, helping to hold down retail prices at supermarkets and warehouse stores.
That was when a coalition of giant milk companies and dairies, along with their congressional allies, decided to crush Hettinga's initiative. For three years, the milk lobby spent millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions and made deals with lawmakers, including incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).
Last March, Congress passed a law reshaping the Western milk market and essentially ending Hettinga's experiment -- all without a single congressional hearing.
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The first challenge to Hettinga came in late 2001, when Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) proposed a measure that would have forced Hettinga to pay in to the pool that Shamrock was governed by.
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In the House, Devin Nunes, a new Republican member from California's Central Valley, introduced a bill to close what he called the "regulatory loophole" that let Hettinga ship unregulated milk into California. Nunes's district is No. 1 in milk production in the nation. Nunes and Sons dairy, located a few miles north of Tulare, was started by Nunes's grandfather and was still in the family
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On the evening of Nov. 2, 2005, lawmakers and several dozen lobbyists squeezed into the conference room of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to seek common ground in the milk dispute. Lewis brought Hettinga and McGrath. Reid came with Anderson's Coon. Shamrock Foods' McClelland was with Kyl.
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Lewis used the muscle of his 66-member Appropriations Committee, the dispenser of billions of dollars a year in spending. But he faced the nearly unified front of the dairy lobby and its friends. Virginia dairy farmers had helped win the key support of Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the Agriculture Committee, convincing him that if Hettinga were brought into line, the threat "would be less likely to show up back here," said lobbyist Charles Garrison. Nunes was a protege of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.). And he had recently backed John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) in his successful campaign for majority leader.
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"I still think this is a great country," Hettinga said. "In Mexico, they would have just shot me."
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so now you know whose pockets need looking into
and who the public can deem trustworthy