Senator Schumer sent a letter to the Bush administration Friday asking the justice department to “fully protect New Yorkers” from increasing milk prices at supermarkets. The senator, according to the letter, conducted a study showing that milk prices in New York City and Long Island have gone up 67 cents a gallon, or 27%, since May 2003. A press release from Mr. Schumer associates the price increases with an accounting scandal at the dairy company Parmalat. “It’s bad news when corporate shenanigans slop over from the board room to the breakfast table,” Mr. Schumer said.

Well, feature the political shenanigans. Mr. Schumer is now complaining that high milk prices are bad news. But last year, he was complaining that milk prices were too low. A December 3, 2003, press release from Mr. Schumer quotes him criticizing the federal agriculture department. “It boggles the mind that USDA could just decide to disregard the law, and let milk prices plummet,” Mr. Schumer said then.

Got that? Mr. Schumer seems to want the agriculture department to keep milk prices high, and the justice department to keep milk prices low. Where’s the underlying logic? It seems weird for two branches of the federal government to be working at such cross-purposes. What could have changed between December of 2003 and April of 2004, other than the price of milk rising above some arbitrary Schumer-approved level?

Our sense is that Mr. Schumer explained a bit of his motivation back in June of 1999, when, as a senator, he testified before his old colleagues on the House judiciary committee on the need for the Northeast Dairy Compact, a protectionist scheme to prevent New York consumers from importing milk from dairy-rich Midwestern states like Wisconsin: “As a former congressman from Brooklyn, I had previously regarded the Dairy Compact skeptically, as I believed it hurt the consumers in my urban district. But since running for the Senate and visiting the dairy farms throughout New York State, I have become an enthusiastic supporter of the Dairy Compact, which I believe will preserve the economy and a distinct rural way of life in my state.” In that testimony, Mr. Schumer said, “an occasional few extra pennies at the supermarket seems a small price to pay to keep family farmers in business.”

In other words, what the Schumer straddle is about is trying to please both city-dwelling milk buyers and upstate dairy farmers. The senator, for whom we have warm personal regard, insists through a spokesman that his letter to the justice department is separate from the Northeast Dairy Compact and that he is simply trying to make sure that, following the Parmalat turmoil, New York doesn’t end up with 80% of the milk market controlled by one company. That’s a goal that free-marketers and the anti-trust enforcers at the Bush justice department can share with the senator.

Still, given the totality of Mr. Schumer’s record on the milk issue, it seems to us like the senator’s agenda isn’t promoting competition in the milk market, but keeping the price at a level that he finds acceptable to both consumers and dairy farmers. It’s consistent with the senator’s regular efforts to have the federal government control the prices of gas and home heating oil by dipping into the strategic petroleum reserve. Our own view is that the prices of commodities like milk and gas are set more efficiently and fairly by the free market than by Mr. Schumer or any other federal official, no matter how intelligent or well-intentioned.