Time for a Change.org

With the State Stores closed, and the PLCB's website essentially non-functional -- 

With restaurants and bars across the state reduced to take-out business --

With the PLCB refusing to service any but the largest accounts (while the Wolf Administration tells Pennsylvania that we should look to the private market to meet the demand caused by the closed State Stores...while denying that market the right to sell spirits)

With thousands of businesses on the brink of failure, tens of thousands of people unemployed -- 

Someone has to do something. 

Why not you? Sign this Change.org petition, asking Governor Wolf and the Legislature (or the PLCB, why not?) to immediately allow the sale of wine and spirits to-go (or local delivery) by all licensees, including beer distributors, through the end of 2020. Give them a chance to make the money that will allow them to stay open, employing some people, and giving others hope for re-employment when the crisis ends.

Buddy, can you spare a signature? 

Before you say, 'Oh, those Change.org petitions don't change anything,' last week a petition just like this one succeeded in getting the government of Ontario to allow restaurants to sell wine and beer to go. We can do that here, just as quickly, just as easily.

Until then, Pennsylvanians will continue to cross the borders, spreading the disease. Those taxes will be lost to the state, where they could help pay unemployment benefits, while the PLCB flounders, trying to serve the whole state from three warehouses with a patched-up website (while the wholesalers who service the PLCB's operations have their offers to help rejected), literally filling only hundreds of orders out of hundreds of thousands of attempts to place an order. 

Is this a total solution? No.
Will this save every restaurant, every bar? No.
Will it adequately compensate every beer distributor for the damage to their business? No.

Is it better than what the State's doing now?  Hell yeah. 

Over 11,000 people have signed as of April 14. This is not a fringe position. 

Please. Sign the petition and share it. Thank you.

Allow Pennsylvania licensees to sell spirits for take-out & delivery thru 12/31/20

Meanwhile, in Saskatchewan...

How long has booze privatization been debated and promised in Pennsylvania? Decades.
How much has been done about booze privatization in Pennsylvania? Nothing. 

Meanwhile, in Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan Party campaigned this spring on a platform that included transitioning their provincial monopoly liquor stores to privately-owned stores. They were put in power by the electorate, and now, less than two months later,, they've announced that they will convert 40 of the 75 government liquor outlets to private stores, and create twelve new private stores.

Dear Pennsylvania General Assembly:

The Madness Just Won't Stop

Some random thoughts.

A little bit of turmoil at the top of the PLCB financial empire? First August Hehemann was let go on November 10, 2014 after saying the PLCB needed to raise prices to offset the continued growth of expenses...in other words, for telling the truth. His replacement,  Oren Bachman, barely makes 15 months and now they are looking for his replacement. Of course, the fiscal year ends in about 50 days, so you have to wonder how long it will take to spin the financials this year with a new guy (or not) there. It took 125 days last year.

One of the better comments about privatizing the PLCB in the past few months: "How seriously can we take the argument that unnecessary government jobs should not be eliminated...because then there will be fewer unnecessary government jobs?"

The PLCB, moving at a speed unheard of in real business, only took 5 years and 10 days to approve a new store in Renovo. Of course, it isn't open yet, and might take who knows how long to actually open, but it made the list.  The new store at 167 Seventh St. is a whopping 327 feet from where the old store was at 536 Erie Ave. This beats the old record of taking over a year to move the Mountain Top Store 50 feet. I wonder if the blogs of last year and this year helped move them along, and if it did how many more years would it have taken otherwise? "Convenience is our middle name.  PLCB convenience that is, we don't give a crap about the consumer" could be the motto of the state stores.

Crap!  I'll never finish modernizing like this!

Canada is again showing how much more progressive they are in some things. A recent court case tossed out provincial restrictions on the purchase and transfer of beer, wine, and liquor from one province to another. It could potentially change the entire Canadian system of trade between the provinces. This is something that Pennsylvania (and U.S. constitutional courts) should look closely at.

Why was it good to have a restaurant or bar license for every 1,000 people in your Grandfather's day, one for every 2,000 people in your Father's day, but not now when it is one for every 3,000 people? What has changed? The PLCB of course, not the citizens' desire to have a drink with their food or to go out. Why is it up to them and not local government to decide what is best for their local citizens?

The PLCB serves no useful purpose in retail, it does not provide better selection, it does not provide better service, and it does not provide the convenience the citizens want. It cannot even be proved definitively that it provides more revenue to the Commonwealth than a competitive private system would. It only provides jobs to the PLCB.

While I wait (and I've been waiting a very long time) for someone to come up with a quote about why a government monopoly on a retail good is something worthwhile, I'll leave you with this:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."   - C.S. Lewis



PRIVATIZE.