Let's Sum Up: the last nine years

It's not exactly nine years since I started this blog, but it's close enough, considering where we are. Seemed like a good time to take stock.

There was a lot of sturm und drang in the first seven years, "Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." The idiots in this case, of course, were the Republican members of the Pennsylvania Senate, led by the surprisingly obstructionist Senator Chuck McIlhinney (R-10), who managed to consistently thwart a clear majority for liquor privatization in the House, led by Speaker Mike Turzai.

Me and King Dork

Whatever the reason, McIlhinney worked with the Democrats (de facto, if not actual hand-in-glove) to keep a solid privatization bill from being laid on Governor Tom Corbett's desk. Corbett would most definitely have signed it, too. McIlhinney knew that, so he never gave him the chance. Could Corbett have been re-elected if he'd been able to deliver liquor privatization? Maybe, and then we'd be in the middle of four more years of King Log, instead of the current ham-handed reign of King Dork, but it's impossible to know.

Then came the election in 2014, and things changed, in a strange way. The GOP increased their legislative majority, but the party's abandonment of Tom "One Term Tommy" Corbett made that less useful by giving us Tom "One Term Tommy" Wolf (I really want "One Term Tommy" to become a Pennsylvania colloquialism for any Governor who fails to win a second term, no matter what their first name actually is). That upset the balance, but once the long budget logjam finally broke (a nasty defeat for King Dork), suddenly things happened.

Lurking in the background; why is
he still allowed to drink in PA?

Bang! We got takeout wine sales at licensees (right, not at groceries or convenience stores, just ones with tavern licenses, and with the stupid "cafe" requirement, and a limit of four bottles, and it's gotta cost the same or more as the State Stores, and the PLCB is still the wholesaler, and of course no spirits sales), we got direct wine shipment (only from wineries, no out of state retailers or importers, and again limits), more stores open on Sundays...whoopee...and we got a surprising little grab bag of other kind of neat stuff like looser cider and mead regulation...none of which really affected the state's retail/wholesale monopoly. And of course, we also got flexible pricing, the gleaming hook inside all the colorful lure of the rest of it.

They were, unfortunately, almost all things that McIlhinney wanted. Why does this man, this second-rate hack from Bucks County who's in a variety of pockets, get to rule over the liquor reform we've wanted for decades? The GOP put him there, and continues to leave him there, despite the way he thumbs his nose at the House majority and the Speaker on these issues.

Yep: you can get the whole thing, or just one bottle.

Ye gods and little fishes. Of course, we also, finally, cross it off the list, saw an end to the much-hated Case Law. Which was awesome, and great, and all that...except of course that the Case Law's evil twin, the Two Sixpack Law that afflicts bars, restaurants, and grocery stores is still firmly in place. And I have to admit, I'm not sure if it applies across types; if I went into the State College Wegmans, could I get two sixpacks and four bottles of wine? Mind blown.

The sad thing is how excited we all are about this. We're whooping it up -- the Case Law is dead! We kin buy us wine at the Giant Eagle! -- so much that we don't even notice how sad it still is.

1. We still aren't even up to "normal," let alone "world class." New Hampshire is still better off: lower prices, better State Store System (much much better), and wine in stores all over the place; New Jersey is much better off, Maryland, Delaware...we're finally a step ahead of Utah, and that's cause for celebration? 
2. Spirits haven't changed a bit, except for the flexible pricing that will soon be costing us more.
3. And worst of all: the half-assed way that we finally were allowed to buy beer and wine at grocery stores -- by letting them buy one of the restricted number of tavern/restaurant licenses -- is causing the price of those licenses to skyrocket, as I warned here (I've warned about this for years). Over $500,000 for a liquor license, just for the piece of paper, so a Giant Market can sell sixpacks? That's putting small independent grocers out of the game (and likely out of business), and making it too expensive for restaurants to have a bar. Hope you like BYOB.

The Case Law is dead, and that's definitely progress. The changes for off-site and cross-license sales for Pennsylvania breweries/distilleries/wineries/cideries/meaderies are a tremendous opportunity (one the State Stores surely weren't delivering). And the 'zombie license' auction, even though it transparently benefits chain stores and the PLCB over everyone else, does, at least, free up some more licenses.

But we still have a long, long way to go.
We're not done till there's whiskey in private stores.
We're not done till they don't need a "cafe" to sell booze.
We're not done till the state's out of the retail and wholesale booze business.
We're not done till this whole thing gets sorted out.

And when we're done...what happens to the guys who got us through this stupid period? The GREAT sixpack shop owners and managers, the GREAT owners and managers of the exceptional beer distributors? You know, the folks who will now own a largely worthless business, as supermarkets and convenience stores undercut them relentlessly on prices, while inevitably shrinking selection (not completely, maybe, but it's never going to be their focus)?

What happens to all those State Store System employees, a significant number of which do a decent job at the register, and some of whom honestly do have a passion for what they're doing? Do they find new jobs? Do they open liquor stores?

What happens when the Legislature finally gets its gumption up and puts a real stake through the heart of this zombie relic of Repeal?

What then? WHAT THEN?

Gun it! The Finish Line is in sight!

I don't know. But specialist booze emporiums do survive and thrive in states where supermarkets sell booze. So they can work here, once we get to that point.

So let's get going, let's keep going, and get this done. Don't slow down, don't listen to the last ditchers who will tell you "We have to give these changes a chance to work out!" No, actually, we don't. We can admit that they were a compromise that didn't need to be made. The time to change this is now, before we have another entrenched set of entitlements.

We've got the momentum. Let's finish this.

PA Democrats need to go to Iowa

When you're talking about getting a bottle of booze, and the words "freedom," "consumer choice," "selection," and "benefiting the citizens" are mentioned, Pennsylvania certainly isn't the first state that comes to mind.  But then, neither is Iowa, even though they are decades ahead of what our blinder-wearing Pennsylvania legislators have come up with for liquor policy.

Just like Pennsylvania at the end of Prohibition, Iowa instituted a state-controlled system for wine and liquor. Unlike the Commonwealth, they listened to their citizens and changed with the times. Maybe you're thinking that Iowa had a different societal outlook, that they were more likely to liberalize their liquor laws. Not even close: Iowa didn't even allow drinks by the glass until 1963. If you wanted a rum & coke, you drank at home or not at all. So for at least the first 29 years after Prohibition ended, we were doing better than Iowa.

Iowa also raised their liquor tax on licensees in the 60's from 10 to 15%, but they didn't hide it by calling it "temporary" for something that happened 30 years earlier as Pennsylvania did with the infamous Johnstown Flood Emergency Liquor Boondoggle Tax. They also didn't then bump it to 18%, either.

Since Iowa didn't have as many convoluted regulations and "interpretations," they were able to totally rewrite the liquor code in 1972, simplifying it from twelve chapters down to just one, all in one place in the code. When Pennsylvania "revised" The Almighty Liquor Code in 1951 they expanded it, and spread the regulations across multiple sections of the state code. Brilliant.

Kwik Star, Charles, Iowa

On May 4th,1972 the Iowa legislature decided that gas stations could sell beer...without having separate registers and cafes! Only 44 years ahead of PA, and they had hundreds of places instead of just nine. In 2011 they allowed gas station liquor sales, too. Don't hold your breath on that.

In 1981 Iowa, again decades ahead of Pennsylvania, allowed craft brewers to not only sell their own beer by the glass but ANY beer obtained from a licensed wholesaler for on and off premise consumption.  35 years later, we're just starting to catch up.

In 1985 the Iowa legislature started to unwind state control of wholesale/retail wine sales, acknowledging that they didn't have the knowledge or expertise needed to operate consumer-friendly outlets. The dual sale of wine in state and private stores took less than two years to show the clear winner, and the state closed state store wine sales in 1987. 20 years later, the Pennsylvania Legislature hatches McIlhinney's Mistake, and we're allowed to buy four bottles of wine at a time in a relative handful of grocery stores. Yippee, yay us.

Not in PA! You can only have 4, put one back.!

Shortly after wine was fully privatized in Iowa, retail liquor followed suit. The state transitioned from 221 state stores to 256 private stores in only four months. By the end of the four month period, Iowa had approved a total of 410 private stores. Even after lowering and eliminating some taxes — contrary to what State Store clerk union president Wendell W. Young IV says — the state of Iowa makes more money by not having state stores as reported by the state of Iowa itself.

Well before the U.S. Supreme Court Granholm v. Heald decision in 2005, Iowa legalized reciprocal wine shipping in 1996. It would be 20 years later, after almost eleven years of ignoring the Supreme Court's ruling, when Pennsylvania  finally came into compliance and allowed such shipments.

So here we are in the fall of 2016. Iowa and Pennsylvania started out roughly equivalent at Repeal, but the Hawkeye State has far outstripped the Keystone State in the race to booze normalcy. Iowa has far greater convenience, one stop shops, and no bureaucrats deciding which legal products are allowed to be sold in the state (the state still has a monopoly on spirits wholesale, but it isn't run in the draconian way the PLCB does it). Iowa is decades ahead in doing what their citizens want; in August, the governor announced another comprehensive review of the liquor code. Meanwhile, The Almighty Liquor Code has only gotten more convoluted and confusing (to legislators and licensees alike) since 1951. 

With over 1,400 retail liquor outlets serving a population a quarter the size of Pennsylvania's, do you know what else Iowa has? Less underage binge drinking, lower DUI fatalities (in both legal and underage drinkers), and lower DUI arrests.

What is the lesson of looking at Iowa? Simple. We don't need the PLCB: they're not convenient, they're not helping alcohol safety, and as we've been telling you for years, when you look at the entire financial picture, they aren't even making the state any money over and above the taxes that a private system could collect.

PRIVATIZE. It just makes sense.

Something to look forward to.

I don't know if you have ever watched a train wreck actually take place in front of you in real time, but it is something that you can't stop looking at. That's what it's like watching the anticipated PLCB profit projections coming from McIlhinney's Mistake, the "epic change" of a liquor bill. The big number is $149 million in increased revenue overall, but with zero dollars, none, nothing coming from the casinos that number is already down to $137 million. Of that, $25 million is going to come from Sunday sales and a whopping $75 million from "flexible pricing."

Now to get that $100 million that would mean, based on FY 2015's profit margin (1) of 5.988%, an increase in sales of about $1.67 BILLION (2). Not gonna happen.  Even if we use the exceptional FY 2014 profit margin (3) of  8.28% it would still be over $1.2 BILLION in increased sales. That ain't gonna happen either. Even if we count the increase in sales from all those places that will be allowed to sell wine it ain't gonna happen. So if the PLCB doesn't decrease expenses -- and when have they ever -- they have to increase sales. A lot.

What this means is that we may have been sold a bill of goods that is not based on any reality. Remember that no increases in staff or payroll are taken into account, at least, not that I've seen. Modernization proponents didn't say if they are or not in their proposals at the time.

PLCB Flexible Pricing model

Now dollar sales do not necessarily HAVE to go hand in hand with an increase in product sales. It follows the same trend, but isn't 1 to 1. With "flexible pricing" the PLCB can charge more for popular items and less for unpopular items in order to move stock. They could, all of a sudden, decide to play hardball and negotiate prices with vendors, which they have chosen not to do so far; see here, here and here. Only now they are going to keep the difference instead of passing it on as they had to do by law before (except they didn't do it, which kept prices higher, which cost you more, and increased sales totals for them).

If they do get lower prices, they can make more money because they will be spending less for product. Well, maybe. In the game of liquor chicken, who will blink first: the major suppliers or the retailer? Think of it this way, who gets the blame when something isn't on the shelf, no matter whose fault it is? The retailer. Who can least afford to aggravate the consumer: the PLCB, or Jim Beam? The PLCB is not dealing from a position of strength: the people want the product, they don't want the PLCB. Having new colors and plants in the store does not make up for having empty shelf space, especially when there is no benefit to the consumer because you want to keep that extra dollar.

Will all  this result in a large increase in sales and a large amount of money saved? Do cows fly? Bailment (not paying for products until they leave the warehouse) was supposed to save $100 million a year too, and that didn't happen. Now I realize that next year, when the financial numbers finally come out, it won't be for a whole year of this new fiasco and I'll have to adjust the totals based on historical values for July and the first two weeks of August, or just look at the second half of the year and extrapolate from there. No matter how you slice up the PLCB pig, you aren't going to find any bacon, only fat.

This is what happens when the PLCB increases sales over 50% in one year

Normal is what we want and there is no rest until we get it.

Privatize.

(1) The PLCB doesn't really make any profit, it just has left over Use Tax money it didn't waste on something. That said, FY 2015 Operating Income of  $111,520,313 divided by Sales Net of Taxes $1,862,269,904 gives you "profit margin" Note that Operating Income is before any required deductions.

(2) $100,000,000 divided by "profit margin" gives you the additional amount required to achieve the desired increase.

(3) Operating Income of $147,959,116, divided by Sales Net of Taxes: $1,786,501,686

It's The Big Day! Er...isn't it?

It's August 8th, the day the "epic changes" take place in Pennsylvania booze law! So...what exactly did we get? We didn't get privatization, that's for sure; in fact, we more than likely got a reprieve in the life of the PLCB, Lets look at what people think and the reality of Act 39.

We're going to get wine in grocery stores! 
Sort of. The PLCB will start issuing licenses for that, supposedly today but odds are you won't see wine in your grocery store. Why? Because most stores won't qualify for the idiocy of separate entrances, cashiers, and 30 seat cafes, or they won't be able to afford to make those changes or to even buy a license. Less than 20% of grocery stores will.

But we still get direct wine shipping!
True, even though it took a decade for the state to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court Granholm ruling, although the PLCB could have easily issued an "opinion," like they did with 12 packs, or beer at gas stations, or having more than the legal amount of stores open on Sunday, or killing off delivery services, or any of the other things they did without legislative approval. The question is, how many wineries will pay the $250 fee? The answer is likely under 5% of wineries in the U.S. alone, and maybe 1% of all in the world.

Woo-hoo, we can drink all night at the Casino!
No. There are twelve casinos in Pennsylvania, that's true, but NONE, not one, have expressed any interest in paying the state $1,000,000 so they can serve you a cocktail between 2 AM and 6 AM. Shocking, right? 

But won't we have more places to have wine with dinner? 
True, if the mom & pop joint or single proprietor can afford the $30 grand, and they aren't in Philly, the city with the largest population and the most "E" licenses. Remember the lesson we all just learned again: All animals are equal, but some are more equal that others - just like giving special rules for the DNC. 

To explain: here's the actual listing by the PLCB:

If a municipality is "wet” for liquor (allows for the issuance or transfer of restaurant liquor licenses). Act 39 allows an eating place retail dispenser (E license) to convert its license to a restaurant liquor license (R license), without regard to the quota. The fee for such a conversion is for $30,000. However, the E license cannot be converted if there is currently a pending objection by Licensing or if the E license is located in Philadelphia.

Did you get that? No, did you? Let's find a lawyer...a drunk one.

Hey, if we like a bottle at a craft distillery, we can buy it and take it home! 
Maybe. While Act 39 permits distilleries to sell wine and malt or brewed beverages for on-premises consumption, provided that the wine and malt or brewed beverages are produced by licensed limited wineries and licensed breweries...it also states that Act 39 prohibits distilleries from selling products or substantially similar products listed for sale by the PLCB, at a lower price than that charged by the PLCB  This includes sales to licensees.

So what would that be? Bourbon, Rye, Vodka, Gin, Cordials and just about everything else except for maybe White Dog and blended American Malt Whiskey. Makes perfect sense

We still have SLO for those special bottles!
Like the Craft Distillery above the answer is maybe.  The PLCB says "The PLCB is permitted to refuse to process, or prohibit the processing of, SLOs for items that are substantially similar to items that appear on its monthly price lists, or if the PLCB believes demand for the items warrants them being made available generally. The PLCB has the discretion to determine the amount and manner for which any such item will be made available." So if you are ordering a bottle of wine they can say - "We sell wine all the time and you don't need that one" Or because they are slow to catch on. "That bottle you  wanted is really popular and we'll have it in our stores in 6 months so you don't need it now" Even if it is on the SLO list THEY provide. Customer service like that is available only in PA.
The trade off is now they will cost a little less since the markup has gone from 30% to 10% if you are allowed to get it at all..

Aren't they finally going to deliver?
Not exactly. The PLCB will allow delivery, which is good if you need something next month and not next week. Here are the hoops you need to jump through. First, you have to have an importer's license or vendor's permit. Second, the PLCB has to approve of the product. Third, the item ordered must be at an "authorized place of storage." Fourth, you have to order and pay for the product in full before it is released. No credit here! Fifth, the product can then be delivered by a licensed carrier with the possibility of a delivery fee attached. Pretty easy, and definitely worth waiting for!!!!

Jeez. Can the craft Distilleries at least sell hard cider?!
Depends. If you are a holder of a Limited Distillery license, you CAN'T sell hard cider on-premise. However, if you are having a “alcoholic cider, liquor and food exposition” of Pennsylvania products either indoors or outdoors on your property - then you can. Makes perfect sense. Distillers are probably lining up for those now.

There's more, but you get the idea. McIlhinney's Mistake isn't all it's cracked up to be. That's because once again, it's what the Powers in Harrisburg will let us have, not what we -- or anyone in the industry -- wanted.  The easiest way to fix this and all the other inanity of the current and (future PLCB) system it to wipe it clean and start again.  

Privatize. It's simple...because it's really that simple.






(This is day 39 without PLCB financials)

Beer in Supermarkets: the Down Side

Giant Market plans to sell beer at their Stone Mill Plaza store in Lancaster County!

Weis Market opens beer cafe in Mechanicsburg!

Yeah, really, beer in Da Grocery Store in Da Commonwealth!!!!

Is this great? Or is it pathetic?

I asked that question seven years ago, when I first bought a beer at a Pennsylvania supermarket. It's high time that the question was asked again, because things are accelerating. We're seeing more and more big supermarkets adding "beer cafes" and selling sixpacks, and there are going to be consequences; we need to look ahead at what may happen and consider action to head it off.

It's a simple problem. It's great that Pennsylvania supermarkets have figured out a way to sell beer, a workaround that involves sacrificing part of their building to create a "cafe" where people could have a beer if they really wanted to (but mostly don't, with a few cool exceptions where the idea's been embraced) and buying a tavern license, which can be wicked expensive (check by county; hello, Chester!). But clearly the big chain supermarkets -- Giant, Wegmans, Weis, Whole Foods, Giant Eagle -- have found that the profit is worth the cost, because it seems like a month doesn't go by without another opening.

Why is that a problem? A few things. First, Pennsylvania has a "quota system" for liquor licenses: one per 3,000 people in a county. It's essentially a broken system, as it's never really kept up with population shifts, and there are a ton of "grandfathered" licenses in counties that have lost population, and there are a number of exceptions (The Almighty Liquor Code has a silly number of kinds of licenses), but essentially, there are no new tavern licenses being issued. If you want a liquor license, you have to buy one on the open market, because the Legislature foolishly made them transferable and salable. I say "foolishly" because when a liquor license -- a piece of paper issued by the State with no intrinsic value except what the State-enforced "quota system" has given it -- is sold in Chester County, for instance, for $270,000, the State gets next to nothing. Even though the full value of that license only exists because of State law. Yeah, I call that foolish.

That's a problem, because every time a supermarket simply wants to sell beer, it buys up another of these limited licenses, which then become more scarce, and therefore more expensive if you want to buy one to open an actual bar, tavern, brewpub (you need a license to sell anything other than your own beer or Pennsylvania wines at a brewpub), or restaurant. As licenses get more expensive, you get more chain restaurants and fewer independent operators opening (because they don't have the deep pockets); you get more nuisance bars (because they have to sell more booze to make their loan payment), and you get more high-end places with expensive booze (which isn't bad in and of itself, but if the ratio is unbalanced, people have fewer choices).

Another part of the problem is that it creates two tiers of grocery stores: the ones with beer and the ones without. I recognize that some grocery stores don't want to sell beer; especially in rural Pennsylvania, where there are some family-owned places that simply don't hold with alcohol at all. Fine, no reason to force stores to sell beer, but there are stores that would like to and simply can't afford the ridiculous unnecessary expense of buying a tavern license and tying up a substantial amount of retail space and equipment in a "cafe" with separate beer cashiers.

This was brought up at the McIlhinney Hearings in 2013, by a representative from Redner's Warehouse Markets, and Senator McIlhinney's response was essentially 'that's nice, but that ain't gonna happen.' Since then, there have been attempts to come up with a separate license for grocery store sales (of course, another type of license is exactly what we need!), none of which went anywhere. Given the tenacious opposition of the beer distributors to any expansion of grocery store beer sales (and the likely opposition of the already-licensed groceries), I doubt this will fly, and...

That is going to mean we'll have this half-assed workaround forever. The stores that got a liquor license won't be happy with anything that devalues that major investment, so they'll be fighting it. And Pennsylvanians are pathetically grateful for anything that even looks like buying beer in grocery stores (and having a liquor license actually puts the stores one tiny step away from selling wine, as there's already been a push to allow taverns to sell "to-go" bottles of wine), so if we think we have it, we're not going to push for it; we're just going to go to the stores that sell beer. That means that more and more supermarkets are going to go after tavern licenses, which is going to accelerate the scarcity issue (more chains and more nuisance bars!), and put even more pressure on the family-owned supermarkets to sell or close.

Well, hello, unintended consequences!

More crappy nuisance bars. Friendly neighborhood bars will sell their licenses at top dollar while they can, and the families will retire. And we get further away from a REAL solution to the problem.

This is yet another fine mess the PLCB and the Legislature have gotten us into, with the help of the MBDA and the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of Bucks County beer mogul (and SEPTA Board and Turnpike Commission member; and did you know he also owns 4% of the Sands Casino?) Pat Deon. Please note that I do NOT blame the supermarkets; they're just playing the hand that was dealt to them, and playing it well.

The only solution to Pennsylvania's alcohol beverage sales quagmire is going to be an all-alcohol solution, some grand bargain that fixes everything. More on that to come.

Liquor Privatization's Enemy #1: Senator Charles McIlhinney

Three times in three years a reasonably effective liquor privatization bill passed the PA House (it also came close in 2014, but got sidetracked as GOP legislators scurried to distance themselves from Governor Corbett's sinking reelection ship). That's something that never happened before in the 80-odd years since the PLCB was established, despite decades of polls that consistently showed that was what Pennsylvanians wanted. But thanks to the solid support and unfailing energy of Representative Mike Turzai, the House Majority Leader and now Speaker, it finally happened, and it was historic.

One of those bills also passed the Senate, but it was a sacrificial lamb, vetoed by Governor Tom "I Love Me Some PLCB" Wolf. But the other two were shot down in the Senate, practically single-handedly, by Senator Charles "Chuck" McIlhinney, the Republican who represents the 10th District in northern Bucks County...curiously, the same district that gave us Joe "Water Heater" Conti, better known to readers of the blog as Joe Da CEO, the former "CEO" of the PLCB who resigned three years ago while under investigation for ethics issues (an investigation that may still be going on under the eye of a federal grand jury). There must be something innately pro-PLCB about that area.

The first time the privatization bill passed the House, in 2013, McIlhinney held a press conference as soon as it happened -- in mid-March -- and announced that the Law & Justice Committee (his committee; he was and still is the majority chairman) would be holding hearings on liquor privatization. He had three months, and the hearings -- stacked with anti-privatization speakers, a circus of shouting and intimidation -- were shoved into the last part of that, after which McIlhinney held everything up on his committee until he presented his version of the bill.

Then I simply took the House language and burned it. With fire.

In a legislative move known as "gut and replace," McIlhinney replaced the House's bill in its entirety with his own scheme, a mishmash of State Store clerks' union-proposed "modernization" measures (that are blatantly anti-consumer), beer distributor pipe dreams, and his own plan for selling wine by the bottle (but only four bottles at a time) at taverns and restaurants, a plan no one asked for and no one wanted. The committee got that a week before the session was over. It never even came to a vote.

The second time, in 2015, the House passed another privatization bill. Knowing that Governor Tom "Look For The Union Label" Wolf would veto a solid liquor privatization bill in the first pass -- he'd said so, promised it -- McIlhinney waved it through, the Senate passed it, and sure enough: Wolf vetoed it, along with the proposed budget.

And now? We still have no budget, but McIlhinney's still at work. The House passed another privatization bill in December, part of their negotiation strategy with the Governor, and this time, McIlhinney went to work on it...making it look a LOT like the bill he shoved out in 2013, complete with no change to the state wholesale monopoly, nebulous talk about selling wine at grocery stores that had bought an R-license and were selling beer, and plenty of anti-consumer "modernization" language (including "flexible pricing," which essentially gives the PLCB the green light to raise prices to cover their ballooning operating expenses). It's what we've been calling The Big Step Sideways. It's not anything the House was going to pass when it comes back for reconciliation, and he knew it, and now liquor privatization has apparently been dropped from the negotiations. Chances are slim that it will come up this year; an election year. (Which is foolish: no legislator is going to lose their seat over how they vote on liquor privatization.)

Go ahead. Ask me "Why?" again. I love that.

McIlhinney, you've done it again. Which leads us to ask...why? As in Why does McIlhinney so doggedly and effectively thwart privatization efforts? He's a Republican, isn't he? Aren't they supposedly the party of business, of smaller government? Well...maybe. But there's pro-business, and then there's pro particular businesses; like this. And then there's the personal politics of the whole thing, like this. (It's worth noting that some pundits tag the beer magnate noted in those links, Pasquale "Pat" Deon," as the reason we didn't see a privatization bill pass the House in 2012). And then there's this winking tidbit about Pennsylvania politics: Unions buy Democrats; they rent Republicans.

But another why is this one: Why does the state Republican party continue to put up with McIlhinney's shenanigans on this issue, and indeed, why is he in the one spot, the chairmanship of Law & Justice, where he can effectively, single-handedly, block privatization? Is it true what the unions have consistently said, what the Democrats have consistently said? That the state GOP doesn't really want privatization, that it's too good an issue to run on, to get donations with, and to pass it would kill that cash source? The thing is, for that to be true, it would all hinge on...Chuck McIlhinney.

Contact your Representative NOW

Do not let Senator McIlhinny and his Big Step Sideways liquor plan become what we will have to live with for decades to come. Make no mistake: if this goes through, there will be no further change to Pennsylvania's liquor and wine sales for years. We'd be much better off staying with the system as it is today for another year and fixing it properly than taking this Frankenstein plan that Senator McIlhinney has been pushing for the past three years. Ask yourself: where did this plan that no one really wants come from? Why is he so sure this is the way to do things? And the most important question: cui bono? Who benefits? 

Write your Representative today and remind them that REAL privatization is what we want. Below is the letter I wrote to my Representative; feel free to use it or change it as you wish.

Dear Representative xxxxxxxxxxx,

I urge you and your colleagues, with the utmost vigor, to reject the half-baked plan of Senator McIlhinny. He has been an obstructionist to the privatization movement for years and continues in that role now.  The citizens want privatization: private stores, selling to private individuals and businesses, while buying whatever they want from private wholesalers. Anything less means a continuation of the gross ineptitude, graft and malaise that is the current PLCB.

The selling of retail products is not part of government, the regulation of those products is. A simple concept that needs to be adhered to.

Sincerely,

xxxxxxxxxxx

McIlhinney's Mistake?

McIlhinney's Mistake.

Is that what we're going to be calling the liquor "privatization" bill that comes out of the Senate's Law and Justice Committee next week? Senator Chuck McIlhinney is the majority chair of the committee, and he's telling anyone who will listen that he'll have a bill ready before the end of the legislative session on June 30, a privatization bill.

He's held three hearings -- generally described as "stacked" by reporters across the state, and they mean stacked against privatization -- in which he allowed the Democratic members of the committee free rein to pontificate, bloviate, and in Senator Ferlo's case, desecrate the reputations of several public figures, including the commander of the PA State Police. Only a few people who favored privatization who were allowed to speak, and at the end of their presentations and following grilling, McIlhinney would dismiss their testimony with a breezy "that's what you're saying, but that's not what's going to happen" statement from his chairman's position.

McIlhinney says he held these hearings to bring out the facts so he and his colleagues could make a decision on privatization. Really? First, be honest and admit that NO Democrats will vote for privatization, no matter what they hear: on this issue they're owned by the unions, and they do NOT want to see the Governor gain any legislative victories when they sense his re-election chances as weak. Those are their main issues. Second, everything McIlhinney's been saying indicates that his bill is going to be the same bizarre plan he's been talking about for almost two years.

Best guess at that, from things he's been saying: bars and restaurants should be allowed to sell full bottles of wine and spirits to go, the State Stores stay open, the case law stays and the beer in grocery stores situation remains in its ridiculous "cafe needed" state, and the PLCB remains as the state's sole wholesaler...and that's going to be "privatization," McIlhinney's Mistake-style.

Tell your Senator you want REAL privatization, not McIlhinney's Mistake. You want the State Stores gone in six months, Washington State style. You want privatization of wholesale. You want beer, wine, and spirits sold in the same store, and at least 2,000 of those stores -- whatever they are -- in the state. You want an immediate and simple end to the Case Law and its stupid brother, the 12-pack Law. You want an immediate end to the Police-Enforced Monopoly; Pennsylvanians can buy booze anywhere they want and bring it back into the state. And you want it all, now. 

If the Senator comes out with a real privatization bill? GREAT! But we need to get this done. We can't afford a mistake. Not McIlhinney's Mistake.