Bernie v. Howard

by Art Woolf

Sanders Sets Sights on Dean for Antitrust Suit

---Headline in Barre-Montpelier Times Argus

I never knew they didn't get along.

Comments

[Sheldon Katz]

If the dairy processing business is so profitable, why doesn't the senator enter the business himself, m and offer farmers higher prices for raw milk? Maybe he could get some friends to invest. His buddy Hugo Chavez seems to have enough money to interfere with and corrupt the internal politics of countries from Argentina, to Colombia, to Honduras. The two of them could get together and make farmers a better offer.

And it doesn't have to be Sanders and Chavez. If dairy processing is abnormally profitable, then why aren't other companies looking to get into the business. Surely, there are larger companies with sufficient capital, expertise, and contacts with retailers to enter this business and drive down Dean's supranormal profits.

And just like the oil companies, another target of Sanders's ire, if Dean Foods is so greedy, why do raw milk prices fluctuate? Why does Dean not always keep the price as low as it is today?

The funniest thing about this piece (if anything is funny given about the real pinch many dairy farmers are in) is Sanders's lamentation that demagoging this issue is getting harder and harder. Not to worry, Sanders is never at a loss for issues to demagogue. He never let's the facts, or the immutable laws of economics, get in the way.

[David Jaqua]

Slanders v Dean Foods,

The funny thing is, Slanders omitted to mention that Dean Foods is not a very profitable business.

According to Standard and Poors, they made $175 million on $12 billion of sales in 2008, which is less than a 1.5% profit margin.

As for their earnings trend, Slanders misrepresents as usual. Here arfe the annual earnings for the past 8 years in millions.

2008 - 175
2007 - 126
2006 - 278
2005 - 254
2004 - 253
2003 - 288
2002 - 236

Not exactly anything to write home about.

[Chris Campion]

Sanders doesn't seem to mention that dairy prices are already heavily buttressed via public policy intervention. I suspect that this same approach will be used to make sure fair prices are set for cars built by Government Motors - and we'll have to apply for a GM rebate by proving we make too little money to afford one of these new super-vehicles, while people who make too much money (to be determined by Sanders, who has lived the last 30 years or so off the sweat of other peoples' tax payments, so he really knows what's fair) will have to pay a "surcharge" on the new "Pelosi 3000" soon to trundle off a manufacturing line and appear at a taxpayer funded car dealership near you.

What other industries aren't receiving a "fair" price now? Are iPods too expensive? Can't we solve the injustice of overly expensive music through the righteous indignation and self-promotion of our elected "leadership"? And taxpayer support?

With all these problems to be so quickly and easily solved by a trillions-spending gov't, why haven't we just given them more of our money before? I'm so relieved to have all this great thinking being done for us by the enormous economic intellects that seem to spontaneously gather in large white buildings in DC.