Death By a Thousand Cuts: it's working!

Thousand cuts, baby. That's how I like my hoagies.

Seven years ago, when UFCW 1776 President (For Life) Wendell W. "Windy Wendy" Young IV was faced with the reality of wine sales being allowed at grocery stores (and the possibility of wine sales at beer distributors, but the beer distributors bobbled that), he predicted that it would mean the end of the State Store System. "Young says allowing wine to be sold by private sector would take away business from state stores and be the 'death by a thousand cuts' to the state store system."

Such drama! And then it went through, and Wendy didn't say nothing more about it. In fact, The Haircut That Walks Like A Man hasn't had much to say since Act 39 went through in 2016, probably because he figured flexible pricing was going to be such a bonanza for covering the constant rise of operating costs that his job was done. 

But that "thousand cuts" call is coming back to haunt him...because it looks like he was right. 

Last week, I asked the PLCB for wine sales figures from the past three years for the State Stores, private sales, and overall sales. It's an interesting picture. I had to break it up to fit it into the format of the blog; here's a comparison by unit sales, the number of bottles sold. "Non-licensee" is the State Store sales; "Licensee" is sales through licensed private retailers: bars, restaurants, resorts, and grocery/convenience stores (that includes by-the-drink sales, which you would assume are relatively steady year-on-year).

2015 is prior to the shift to bottle sales at the licensees; 2016 was a partial year, and 2017 is the first full year of such sales. Notice the huge jump that year: 39.9% rise in licensee sales, followed by a 17.4% rise in 2018. Look at the 2015 numbers vs. the 2018 numbers: they almost doubled in three years. Meanwhile, the State Stores were sucking wind: a 4% drop in 2017, a 3.7% drop in 2018.

Calendar Year	Customer Type	Unit Sales	% Change From Prior Year
2015	Non-Licensee	67,034,168	N/A
2015	Licensee	13,331,217	N/A
2015	Total	80,365,385	N/A
2016	Non-Licensee	68,507,884	2.20%
2016	Licensee	15,282,492	14.60%
2016	Total	83,790,376	4.30%
2017	Non-Licensee	65,797,156	-4.00%
2017	Licensee	21,377,505	39.90%
2017	Total	87,174,661	4.00%
2018	Non-Licensee	63,333,698	-3.70%
2018	Licensee	25,099,208	17.40%
2018	Total	88,432,906	1.40%

How about dollar sales? Looks about the same, though the licensee dollar sales actually grew a bit more than volume sales did, each year...which means the State Stores are moving more bulk tanker stuff, and the private stores are skimming some of the higher-ticket sales. A thousand cuts, indeed. 

Calendar Year	Customer Type	Dollar Sales	% Change From Prior Year
2015	Non-Licensee	$835,985,290	N/A
2015	Licensee	$138,374,473	N/A
2015	Total	$974,359,763	N/A
2016	Non-Licensee	$862,634,339	3.20%
2016	Licensee	$160,312,440	15.90%
2016	Total	$1,022,946,780	5.00%
2017	Non-Licensee	$827,676,034	-4.10%
2017	Licensee	$225,796,242	40.80%
2017	Total	$1,053,472,276	3.00%
2018	Non-Licensee	$812,080,965	-1.90%
2018	Licensee	$266,808,655	18.20%
2018	Total	$1,078,889,620	2.40%

Private stores = more state revenue, more jobs

Overall sales are still growing, which is going in the PLCB's pockets because they're still effectively the monopoly wholesaler, but look at how much they grew when people could buy in private stores! Imagine if we went crazy and allowed private liquor sales as well! We'd be rolling in the (Johnstown Flood Emergency) tax revenue; increased sales would clearly eliminate any need for a Washington-style tax increase. Oh, and the PLCB press secretary, Shawn Kelley, happened to mention that they "understand from anecdotal reports from the Pennsylvania Winery Association [that Pennsylvania wine sales] have grown significantly since grocery and convenience stores started selling wine." I'll just bet they have. 

No need to go on; the numbers speak for themselves. I never thought we'd say this, but...Wendell was right. It's not all that shocking, or that brilliant a prediction, though. Give the people a choice, and they'll walk away from the State Stores. Give us the choice on spirits, too, and see how long it is before State Stores start withering and dying on the vine...so to speak.

Privatize. 

"Flexible pricing" means someone's getting screwed again

Is four bottles of wine worth the screwing we're going to get from flexible pricing?

Oh, my pricing is flexible. You bet, Slick.

Ever since the State Store clerk's union and its president (Wendell W. "Windy Wendy" Young IV), the Democrats who do their bidding in the Legislature (yeah, they do, and if there's a Democratic legislator who can give me a real reason for keeping the State Stores other than "it gets me lots of campaign cash from the unions," they'll be the first one), and syndicalist economists put forth their plans for the "modernization" of the police-enforced monopoly of the PLCB, one thing has been the hidden poison in the sweet candy of concessions, the coiled and sharpened spring waiting to slash out of the intricately-ticking machinery of "improvement" and slice open our wallets — "Flexible pricing."

Whenever the laundry list of proposals came out — more stores open on Sundays, open later, hiring outside Civil Service rules (so they could hire some less dead wood) — flexible pricing was always there, about five or six bullets down the list, promising to break prices free of the mandated mark-up so that they could give us lower prices! Except it didn't say "lower pricing," it said "flexible pricing," and we told you over and over again, "flexible pricing," in the PLCB's control, was only going to "flex" in one direction: UP. 

Well, they got it, when Senator McIlhinney laid his latest mutated liquor bill on us, and Speaker Turzai signed off on it (there were some good things in there, but whether they were worth the cost...), and The Wolf Who Walks Like A Man signed it. Hurray! Free at last...a little!

Remember: Wendy said to look concerned.
But... Flexible pricing, guys! Hot damn!

And Wendell cried and pounded the podium, and told us that allowing supermarkets to sell wine was the beginning of the end, death by a thousand cuts...but he must have been smiling as he turned away from the cameras, a secret, villainous smile, because the PLCB and the union got the flexible pricing they wanted. It was limited to the 150 best-selling products (which is where most of the money comes from anyway), and it cost them a tiny little slice of their monopoly, allowing licensees to sell no more than four bottles of wine at a time (at prices guaranteed to be higher than the State Stores, because they had to be bought from the PLCB wholesale monopoly at rigged prices). 

But it was worth it to Wendell and his yellow-shirted minions in the PLCB. Now journalists across the state are finally waking up to what we told you years ago: flexible pricing means we're getting screwed. Again. The PLCB is finally using their long-heralded buying power to hammer down the price to them, but you'll never see a dime of that. Have a look. 

The Pittsburgh TribLIVE, October 5th: "Pa. LCB accused of using new 'flexible pricing' law to boost profits" — "Privately, though, wine and spirits officials said the LCB asked for specific percentage cuts in cost but without saying what markup would then be applied. That strategy means suppliers wouldn't know what the final shelf price would be for shoppers." 

Harrisburg PennLIVE, October 19: "Lawmakers need to go back and include liquor in 'liquor reform'" — "We urge the state to forego what it euphemistically calls "flexible pricing" for another two years. We urge the General Assembly to finish the job and complete privatization." 

Harrisburg PennLIVE, October 18 — "Here's how Pennsylvanians got hoodwinked by booze 'modernization'" — "The provision, known as flexible pricing, isn't likely to be very satisfying to anyone who shops for wine or spirits in Pennsylvania. It gives the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) the ability to manipulate price, something it has long desired as a way of raising revenues." 

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette October 20 — "Pennsylvania's liquor ‘modernization’ hoax" — "Here’s an unfortunate reality about Pennsylvania’s so-called modernization of its liquor business: You’re going to pay a lot more for it. This isn’t modernization, but rather a step backward."

What does Windy Wendy offer in rebuttal? This almost incoherent mish-mash of his old arguments — the State Stores offer competitive prices (Really? How can they be "competitive" when there is, by law, no competition allowed?), they bring in lots of taxes (just like private stores would), and the new licensees will not match the selection or prices of the PLCB (that's actually true: because the law doesn't allow them to) — with a pathetic plea to 'stop picking on me': "Is it time for PennLive to perhaps take a different tack on the long-running battle over dismantling the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) by, perhaps giving it a rest already?" Perhaps perhaps! He's so pissed he can't even speak straight; this is a direct quote from the op-ed piece that PennLIVE allowed him to dump on their website: "We opposed this law, Act 39, will cost taxpayers millions in lost revenue." [SIC] Sad, really. He's clearly got nothing, and his Democratic lapdogs in the Legislature have got nothing. 

Okay, headline...I got it!
"McIlhinney's Mistake Screws Us All"

So let's do something about this. "Flexible pricing" was foisted on us by Senator Chuck McIlhinney, for reasons known mainly to him. Why don't the newspapers ask McIlhinney why the PLCB got this one-sided tool without any restrictions on its use, or requirements for reporting on how it is used? Ask him why there's a four-bottle limit on wine sales at licensees? How about you ask him why his law favors big markets over mom-and-pop stores by requiring the whole separate "cafe" with separate registers and clerks to ring up beer and wine? Ask McIlhinney who he's compromising with. And ask the Democrats why not ONE of them has voted for real liquor privatization.

And the rest of us? The citizens? Ask your legislators, your reps and your senators, to put a two-year hold on "flexible pricing." Haven't we paid enough? Why should we pay more so the PLCB can continue to paper over the ruin that their spiraling operating costs are creating?

The best solution to all of this? Stop tinkering: PRIVATIZE. It works in over 2/3 of the other states, it works in over 85% of the countries in the world. Why not Pennsylvania? 

How to lie like Wendell Young IV

We like to take UFCW Local 1776 president-for-life Wendell W. "The Haircut" Young IV to task for bending, breaking, and shattering the truth about booze sales in Pennsylvania. He's out in the public again as the budget impasse comes down to the close and Senator McIlhinney's Great Step Sideways "modernization" plan for the State Stores is in play. Windy Wendy is spreading the same old manure about changes to the State Store System: any change is bad, we need these jobs, private companies are evil. 

As a public service, we will now present actual statements by Mr. Young, showing the different types of lying and some of the nuances of the same. 

Never gonna happen is it?

The Flat-out Lie 
One of Wendell's favorite type of lie, the flat-out lie is best used in press releases or other forms of communication where the liar can't be questioned with any immediacy. This type of lie is best used to impress or intimidate by showing the supposed knowledge of the liar.

For example, you can find this lie on the union's website "...the PFM found that privatization will cost more than $1.4 billion in transition costs over five years,”

As one of Mr. Young's favorite lies. He has said this numerous times in numerous places, but saying it over and over doesn't make it true. The PFM report  on page 186 lists the Operating and Transition costs as $1.4 billion. Mr. young always seems to forget the Operating part, the costs that are incurred by simply running the stores while they're open. The normal costs of operation, not costs incurred by any kind of transition.

And on page 180 of the report it shows how much just those operational costs are. Remember: these are costs that would be incurred just to keep the state stores running anyway.

From this you can see that keeping the state stores would cost well over $2B over the same time period since there would be no reduction in Operational expenditures over time. (Take the first entry and multiply it by 5.) That's actually likely to be on the low side: current expenses are $470 Million per year and going up.

The Lie of Time Passed

Another favorite lie for Mr. Young is to "forget" that one, two, five, or ten years have passed since he came up with whatever statistic he is talking about, but he still presents that old and often outdated information as current.

In this example, eight years after this CDC report was current (the CDC doesn't even have it up on their website anymore), the UFCW Local 1776 webpage still says that in 2007, PA had the lowest death rate in the country associated with alcohol consumption. They are actually correct about this....for 2007.  By 2009 Pennsylvania's rate had increased over 25% (Page 87 in the report) and by 2012 had gone up even more (Table 19, Page 78), resulting in a rate 30.8% higher than the 2007 figures Mr. Young likes to use. If you imply that the union-run, state liquor stores are responsible for the low rate, then aren't they also equally responsible for the higher rate? 

Just to make things worse for Wendell, of the states with lower rates than PA for the past seven years, two of them are New Jersey and Maryland. (Damn those free privately-run states right on our border...that so many Pennsylvanians use.)

The Lie by Omission
Another favorite used to make statements sound better without telling the whole truth.  We'll start out small with this. "Pa. has Wine and Spirits stores in every one of the state's 67 counties; West Virginia had state run stores in every county; with private companies in charge, five counties now have no stores."

The implication is that some people in West Virginia have to go unreasonable distances to find a liquor store. The truth is that NOBODY in West Virginia has to drive as far as some residents of PA. Why? West Virginia is a much smaller state with much smaller counties. It only makes sense...unless you are a union boss.

Wendell likes to talk about West Virginia and Iowa a lot. Mostly he will tell you about how they lost so much money on privatization, using statistics from the Iowa Alcohol Beverage Division and West Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control Administration.

Only total revenue did not decrease in Iowa. Reading the same PFM report linked above, it was reported for Iowa that: "Privatization was deemed successful from a revenue standpoint, with profits increasing by $125 million over the first 11 years of privatization compared to estimates under State control of the stores. At the time of the 10-year review, the conclusion was that most of the increase in profits was the result of eliminating the state stores and the costs associated with them. " (Page 111)

Oh, and Iowa now has over 1000 outlets with a quarter of our population, and still has less DUI and binge drinking across the board.

How much did West Virginia save when they didn't have state stores to maintain, with salaries and pensions? What about the auction fees for licenses (over $60 million)?. Then there are the business taxes that are now paid which weren't before. I don't see any of that in Mr. Young's calculations.

You know what else he doesn't say?  For eight years, West Virginia state stores and private stores were in direct competition in wine...and the state was losing. If state run stores are better, how could that be? 

You want more? How about the 5,000 family sustaining jobs you hear him talk about being lost to privatization all of the time? Here is another example, and another from 2 years ago.  What he doesn't tell you is that the PLCB says that over 45% of their workforce is classified either part-time or seasonal (page 43). Hardly "family sustaining," and it's not 5,000, either.

So if you hear Mr Young say anything about privatization, it is time to fire up your google-fu and check to see how badly he is lying about it this time.

Privatization is Modernization.

Private Retail, Private Wholesale.

All We Want Is Normal.

So how's Wendell doing?

On August 25th, UFCW 1776 "President For Life" Wendell W. Young IV sent a letter to the Morning Call. Go read it, I'll wait.

Got it? I felt it called for a response. The Morning Call doesn't allow people to respond at length to letters, so I thought I'd post my entire response here. Have a look.

Wendell "Say Anything" Young

Wendell is talking; Wendell is spinning

The PFM report says Operational and Transition costs; the operational costs are the normal expenses of keeping the stores open, no different from every day, and they pay those whether they're closing down or not. This Operational part is almost $1.2 billion. The same report also shows that keeping the state stores will cost over $2.4 billion. But none of that matters, since the report was done in response to a privatization proposal from almost 3 years ago that is no longer in play. So the $408 million that Wendell mentioned doesn't apply either, because current proposals have different income structures. He knows this, but he won't tell you the truth.

The PFM report also called privatization in Iowa a success. Iowa reported more revenue after getting the state out of retail. Of course, Iowa has twice as many stores as PA now with less than half the population, and a lower binge drinking and DUI rate too. Yes, liquor prices in Washington went up; we know that, but we also know why. The legislature added 27% in new fees. Privatization didn't cause prices to go up. Politicians did.

Again the PFM report's unemployment estimates are meaningless, because they aren't for the current plan. What isn't worthless is the fact that every place that has privatized some or all of their liquor system has increased employment.  The province of Alberta fully privatized, and tripled employment in the industry so did Washington State. What Mr. Young doesn't tell you is the PLCB prevents those increases here. Maybe they would be union jobs, maybe they wouldn't; I guess that depends on how convincing an organizer Mr. Young is.

A quick look at the numbers — real numbers, not guesses — will tell you that after almost 40 years since the "store in a store" concept was proposed and 35 years since it was implemented, it has been a failure. The program never got more than 16 grocery stores to agree, out of the thousands in the state, to put a State Store within their walls. That number is now down to 15. "Modernization" is not going to suddenly change that.

By the way, ask Mr. Young where the extra "modernization" money is going to come from. The answer is your pockets. Ask him what states have agreed to "buy in" with PA as the modernization plan he touts suggests? (Not one.) While you're at it, ask him about how Sunday sales will have to increase by over $350 million alone to make the modernization goal. "Modernization" means "get Pennsylvanians to buy a LOT MORE BOOZE!!!" So much for "control."

So if Wendell's all wet, what should we do? We are the owners of this system, this "valuable asset," as Wendell keeps saying. Well, in every scientific poll taken over the past 40 years, "the owners" have said we want to be rid of the State Store System. We not only have the right to sell it, but the want and desire to sell it. It isn't his call.

Privatization will bring competition and contrary to Wolfonomics, competition causes lower prices and increased convenience like the State Stores can never provide. Privatization will bring overall increased employment: warehouse jobs, delivery jobs, retail and manager jobs. Privatization brings choice to the consumer. Private store managers stock based on their knowledge and what the consumer wants, not what some bureaucrat in Harrisburg tells them to stock.

But we've got to do it right. Worried about higher prices, or "big box" stores taking over, a new monopoly to replace the old? Learn from other states: don't raise taxes, limit total license ownership to 3 to 5 stores, so nobody can corner the market. Worried about tax collections? Collect the taxes at the wholesale level like is already done for beer. Concerned that license costs will make it too hard for small stores to open? Base license costs on size, or sales volume, so a small 1,000 sq.ft. wine boutique can open down the road from a 30,000 sq.ft. superstore. After all, we don't have either in PA now. Make more licenses available at more reasonable prices, too.

Governor Wolf wants booze in grocery stores? So do the rest of us; allow it! We can become a reciprocal state for wine shipping instead of the Eastern Bloc Control model that is being proposed. Give us a normal system, and we will buy in Pennsylvania instead of running to New Jersey, Delaware, or Maryland, because we'll have those big stores, with big selections, and they'll be convenient.

Privatization solves the problems. The PLCB can't.

Painting Pennsylvania's liquor jail cell nice bright colors, putting up new drapes, and calling it "modernization" will not change the way the system works. Privatization will.

Yes I am a proud privateer. I'm a citizen who sees how backward, graft-filled, nepotism-plagued, anti-small business and anti-consumer, inconvenient, and incompetent our system is.

END IT, DON'T MEND IT.

Wendell Young still lies and I can prove it Part 3

Trust me; it's all true, even the lies.

On the 25th of June, UFCW Local 1776 President-For-Life Wendell W. Young IV sent out another press release. In this new bit of fallacy, he again says that 5,000 PLCB jobs are at stake. Wendell, Wendell, Wendell...he's lying again!

To start with there aren't 5,000 PLCB employees, according the State. But don't take my word for it; unlike Wendell, I can back it up. Just click here,  then pick Employees and then Employee Count by Agency. Could it be that Wendell is talking about some no-show jobs somewhere where people get paid but aren't really there? No, wait, we're talking about the PLCB; that's kind of a given. Even if there were 5,000 jobs at the PLCB, they wouldn't ALL be at stake, because there would still be the stuff a normal state liquor agency does: regulation and licensing and possibly audits of liquor stores, and something that isn't done in PA today....age checks in liquor stores. Maybe the Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement (currently an embarrassing arm of the State Police) would even go back into the PLCB, since there wouldn't be the conflict of interest that caused them to be created in the first place.

Mr. Young goes on to talk about the PFM report from October of 2011; an evaluation of privatization that was drawn up on a completely different plan, but that little fact doesn't stop him. He goes into turbo-spin mode, his second favorite thing to do after lying talking (and getting haircuts). 'The Governor's own report says it will cost $1.4 Billion to wind down the PLCB over 4 years,' he cries. At least that isn't a lie -- the report did say that -- but he also doesn't tell you that it will cost over $2 Billion to keep the PLCB running for those same 4 years, using the same PFM numbers. How does he keep from getting dizzy?

Mr. Young commented on Rep. Gene DiGirolamo's plan that would create more stores inside of or adjacent to grocery stores; and allowing for more flexibility in pricing. All well and good except the PLCB has had the power to put stores in grocery stores or near grocery stores...

FOR AT LEAST 40 FRICKIN' YEARS!! 

Guess what?  The grocery stores don't want 'em, anymore than they wanted the Incredible Robot Army of Wine Kiosks, or else there would likely be more than 16 in the entire state 33 years after the first store in a store was done. I'm not even sure the PLCB really wants to do it, since the requirements for the new Washington County store lists 33 pages of what the DGS/PLCB wants...but has not one line about locating near a grocery store (although it does specify what floor polish is to be used before the PLCB moves in).

Then Wendell blabbers about 'alternative pricing strategies' to 'modernize' the State Stores. Been there, muffed that! Almost 30 years ago, in 1985, the PLCB was tasked with developing alternative pricing strategies that fit within the liquor code. This was done but never implemented, and here we are in 2014, hearing that as part of "modernization," they want to develop alternate pricing strategies. What the hell have they been doing for the past 29 years? If my business was this incompetent, I would be working in a liquor store, not wanting to buy a liquor store.

You keep talking, Wendell, and I'll keep writing.  Deal?

When Theory Doesn't Match Reality - Who Do You Believe?

Today we are going to look at some of the...um, what should I call it -- lies that the pro State Store community uses to try to show that science is on their side.

Remember things like Wendell Young telling us that privatization "...will put alcohol on every street corner and increase crime." (Watchdog.org May 2, 2013). Sounds pretty scary, but Pennsylvania alcohol consumption per capita is already about the same as New York, Ohio, and Maryland, higher than West Virginia and a little lower than New Jersey; Delaware is the highest.  In fact, PA consumption hasn't really changed that much over the years and is slightly higher now than in 1900. (NIAAA Surveillance Report #92 August 2011) Besides being a physical impossibility -- every corner? Really? Where do you put the gas stations and the Starbucks? -- there are local laws that would prevent it too. Still reality has never stopped Wendell before. Do we really need to talk about crime?  PA is dead in the middle for violent crime compared to the border states or the rest of the states for that matter, so it isn't like this is Eden to start with. (FBI UCR report 2012). If we are just average with all this supposed "control," why are all those other states doing better?

Wendell uses this made-up science again and again, but no one ever calls him on it: "The bottom line is we have the absolute lowest death rate associated with alcohol consumption of all 50 states."  Which I disproved not that long ago, so would some debater please call him out on it?

My favorite has to be that consumption will rise 48%.  We heard this in testimony from Dr. Stephen Herzenberg of Keystone Research.  All that effort only to be slammed for using bad science and then for having the gall to not follow his predictions.  It seems that Washington state consumption has only gone up about 9% when you include the increase in in-state sales and the increase in border bleed.  Gotta wonder where that other 39% went to.

Then there is organized labor's tame economist, Dr. Roland Zullo of the University of Michigan, who while working with the Keystone Research Center said that crime is lower in control states, which makes it hard to explain why PA is in the middle of the pack on crime, while being the most onerous control state. I wonder what his reasoning is that DUI fatalities (usually known as the felony of vehicular homicide) went down in Washington state since they privatized.

Both of the above declined to provide any new thoughts on this subject and didn't respond to my emails. Perhaps that was shrewd on their part in light of the fact they have been proven wrong.

Can't forget Dr. Mark Price, also of the Keystone Research Center (I'm beginning to see a pattern here), who agreed with Dr. Herzenberg by using the exact same bad science Dr Herzenberg used in his testimony. His bottom line was that "...privatization will increase negative social impacts, increasing excessive consumption of alcohol (hasn't happened) and traffic fatalities (they went down), alcohol-related violent crime (hasn't happened), and alcohol-related public health problems (the jury is still out on this since only preliminary date is available and mostly only for King County in Washington)

Now Oregon is next up for privatization by the ballot (which would have happened here decades ago if allowed) and their prohibitionists are  coming up with new science to further their cause. However, once again reality doesn't agree with the Power Point presentation (What?  You were expecting peer reviewed journals?) as the respected Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University pointed out.

They say the truth shall set you free so it seems you can pretty much ignore anything from the UFCW, Keystone Reasearch, or Wendel Young. whose only goal is to keep you enslaved to the state store system.

Wendell Young lies and I can prove it Part 2

This will be a continuing series exposing the lies from Mr. Young until the state is privatized or he stops talking, whichever comes first.

Today we have Mr. Young from the PCN call in show of February 19th, 2013 (It could be any show, really, because he just keeps saying the same things). At 28:23 into the show he says: "The bottom line is we have the absolute lowest death rate associated with alcohol consumption of all 50 states."

Nice, except the CDC doesn't agree with him.  Using the numbers from their 2006-2010 study on Alcohol-Attributable Deaths due to excessive alcohol consumption we find that PA only beats two of the six border states, the control state of West Virginia and the quasi control state of Ohio.  All the privately run border states do better.

Perhaps Mr. Young meant PA does better than all 50 states when all alcohol consumption is taken into account, not just excessive consumption? That isn't true either, PA again only beats West Virginia and by less than 2 tenths of 1 percent beats Ohio.

For those of you who don't wish to crunch the numbers I've done it for you.  Population figures are 2010 census data. The key point to look at is for "Citizens per death," the bigger the number, the better the state's citizens are doing. (click on it to see the whole spreadsheet)

Of course, this doesn't include the DUI fatality rate which is higher in PA than 4 of the 6 border states. I would think that those would be associated with alcohol consumption too.

It's not just lies about safety. In this same program, he says there are 40,000 items available through the PLCB, then a year later (as I documented in Wendell Young lies and I can prove it Part 1), he says there are 30,000 items.  Here he says that the smallest stores carry 1,000 items and....you guessed it, says a different number (1,500-3000)  in the linked story later on. He can't even keep his lies straight.

I've been told that if you lie, it is important to keep your lies straight, or else they can come back and bite you in the -- er, trip you up when you least expect it.

Right Wendell?

Wendell Young lies and I can prove it.

On a Pennsylvania Cable Network call-in program (you can follow along here) on Tuesday, 29 April UFCW Local 1776 President For Life Mr. Wendell W. Young IV* made the following statements.

At approximately 5:50 into the show, Mr. Young says: “The typical store in Pennsylvania stocks 3,000 to 6,000 items. Our smallest stores stock 1,500 to 3,000 items and our specialty stores, our largest stores stock 5,000 to 10,000 items.” He then goes on to say: “We carry 30,000 items in the inventory...”

We have billllions and billlions of items.

Nice story, but the online database provided by the PLCB as of 30 April lists only 4,262 total regular items; out of that, 1,017 are close-outs, or holiday items not in stock leaving 3,245 regular items available. There are 11,661 items listed as “Luxury Items,” of which at least 25% are not in stock anywhere in the state; thousands more have only a few bottles available, leaving maybe 7,000 items at most somewhere. If they aren’t at a nearby store, you have to pay to have them shipped in -- just like a private store -- so no real benefit there.

So, according to the PLCB itself there are around 10,500 items in stock. We're not done, though. Then there are the inventory mistakes. Items like 34191 (Ehler's Estate 120 80 Red Blend St Helena 2010) are listed, but are not in stock, according to the inventory. Maybe strike a few hundred, conservatively, because of that.

Hey...trust me, slick.

But what about those "largest stores"? Mr. Young says that there is a store out there somewhere with everything Pennsylvania stocks, all 10,000 items that are left after the close-outs, not in stock, and inventory mistakes are taken out. I’d like to know where that one store is. Probably next to the store that carries the additional 15,000 items he says are in inventory...that the PLCB's own database  says are not. Looks like Wendell lied.

At 16:45, Mr. Young continues with: “When you look at every state that had a system like ours and two that were very similar to ours, Iowa and West Virginia, went through the same kind of transition at the lobbying efforts, because of the lobbying efforts of people like Kevin (Kevin Shivers NFIB PA State Director) and the folks he represents. Neither of those states ever recovered from what they lost in revenue.” Well, that sounds pretty damning. But for Iowa, at least, it just isn’t true. As I documented in this story, the Iowa Department of Revenue says they made $95 million more because they privatized their retail. Mr. Young lies again.

Privatize, and every job in the state is lost.

When you get to 17:10 in the story, Mr. Young says: “The jobs that Larry talked about will not be there, Sandra the caller was right. The retailers that will take most of these licenses, the big chain store retailers, they are just going to rearrange some of the...shelf space in their stores, reuse the same workforce that they have most of them who are part time, minimum wage or slightly above, WalMart, Target, the supermarket chains mostly non-union chains. Now, you don’t have to take my word for that, the Governor conducted a study on this, he went out and hired a company to study it –they told him the same thing. They said little or no jobs are going to be created by privatizing this.”

The study Mr. Young is talking about was for a completely different plan and has no bearing on current plan under discussion. More relevantly, every place on the continent that has privatized some or all of their liquor system has seen an increase in employment. Jobs tripled in Washington and Alberta, the last two which fully privatized. They doubled in Iowa, and even increased in West Virginia. In any case, 33% of the PLCB workforce is part time already, and that percentage is growing. Another set of lies from Mr. Young.

He goes on to talk about HB790 from last year saying how the bill claimed it would get $800 million for the sale of the system and that at 17:58: “$500 million of that approximately was from licensing wholesalers, an estimated 30 wholesalers in Pennsylvania. Every other state in the country they have 2 or 3 wholesalers.”

Hold on, Wendell. Let's check that. I admit I didn’t look at all 50 states, I just looked at the one because I knew he was lying about it. New York has 150 active licensed wholesalers.You can look for yourself here. Washington now has over 500 licensed importers and distributors. I think I see a pattern. Mr. Young lied again. 

I'll spin you right round, like a record, baby.

Of course, not everything he says is a lie. Sometimes he likes to do his second favorite activity and toss in some spin. Disingenuous might be the kindest thing you can say about that. An example of that is at 18:20 when he says: “And think about the Governor's study; said that it would take a billion four to unwind the system.” Of course, he fails to mention it would take over $2 billion to keep the system using those same numbers. Way to walk the fine line, Wendell.

One of my favorites occurs at 19:53 when Mr. Young tells us that: ”The PLCB runs about 20 stores in grocery stores and they would like to have more, but because of Mike Turzai and Governor Corbett they’ve put, they’ve refused to allow changes to the way the liquor board operates that would allow them to put more stores closer to supermarkets, next to them, or inside supermarkets.”

So if I understand what he is saying, the PLCB, which makes its own decisions on where to put and how many stores there are, can’t put more stores near or in grocery stores because of the current administration, even though they have no input on store placement, and have only been around for three years? The PLCB did the first “store in a store” 33 years ago and the have about 20 (I’m pretty sure the number is 17 at the moment) and yet somehow it is the Corbett administration who is holding up doing more. Another lie, a double lie.

That is only the first 20 minutes of an hour long show and Mr. Young continues on about the same pace for the rest of it. But I got tired of listening to and transcribing his lies. If Mr. Young wants to refute any or all of this he knows where I can be found.

Full Privatization is the only REAL Modernization.


*We've jokingly called Wendell "President for Life" at times, but of course that's not actually true. Young's father was president of UFCW Local 1776 for 43 consecutive years, till 2005, and Wendell IV has been president ever since, which might lead one to believe that it's a hereditary position, but he just keeps getting re-elected in free and fair elections. So it only looks like he's the Hereditary President for Life, much like a dictator in a corrupt, oppressive third world nation. He's not, really. He just looks exactly like it. Especially with that haircut.