Get Mom Vodka For Mother's Day? Why not?

If you've never heard of the Independent State Store Union, you're missing some fun. They're the union that represents the managers of the State Store System, and they have a real love-hate relationship with the PLCB and the state's monopoly on liquor and wine sales: they love to complain about the PLCB, and they apparently hate alcohol and working late. They put out press releases all the time, critical of the PLCB's  policies and the Board members themselves; they're usually inadvertently hilarious in their earnestness.

Recently, they sent an editorial to the Centre Daily Times suggesting that the serious abusive drinking situation at Penn State could be alleviated...by shorter hours in the State Stores. You can only assume that they'd expect to get the same pay for those shorter hours, but that probably has nothing to do with their idea, it's all about the children. They do display a disturbing disgust with alcohol, considering their job is selling it: "the PLCB continues to promote a carnival-like alcohol atmosphere for drinkers..." I haven't seen any tilt-a-whirls at my local State Store, but I'll keep an eye out for them.

Their latest press release is here...oh, to hell with it. I'll just reprint it. It's a press release, right, and this is the press, right? Fair use! They're upset that the PLCB has an ad campaign suggesting that folks buy their mothers a nice bottle of vodka for Mother's Day. Actually, they're freaking out about it.

"Your Mother's Day promotional radio ad program costing $142,000 is more damaging to the common good of all Pennsylvanians than the mere dollars expended.  You refuse as Board and chief staff members to make any decision that is contrary to the most outrageous marketing strategies of the alcohol beverage industry no matter what effect they have on the public good.  You are collectively the number one drug pushers in Pennsylvania.  As puppets of the alcohol beverage industry, you have abdicated any role of being a regulator against the bottom line interests of the industry," says Ed Cloonan, Information Director for ISSU.
Cloonan continues, "Your Mother's Day radio/print hawking promotions makes a joke of alcohol education for women.  In advance of Mother's Day 2011, you will be able to send coupons and frequent drinker credit rewards to pregnant women."

ISSU is asking all five gubernatorial campaigns to replace the three PLCB Board members, the CEO, the Director of Marketing and Merchandising, and the Director of Retail Operations as quickly as possible after the winning candidate assumes office in a new administration."

Where to begin?The guys who manage the stores that sell booze are accusing their bosses of being "drug pushers," they stoop to the lowest sort of neo-prohibitionist hype-drivel ("frequent drinker credit rewards to pregnant women," forsooth!), and...they're calling for their boss to be fired. Now, I'm all for calling for my boss to be fired if they deserve it; I did it while in federal service in 1989...but I did it in my exit interview. Because publicly saying your boss should be fired -- for selling drugs!-- is usually tantamount to submitting your resignation. This is a big Reason to abolish the State Store System: to do away with counter-intuitive foolishness like this.



This report on WHTM (ABC affiliate in Harrisburg) shows what a mountain is being made out of this molehill. This is all -- pardon the expression -- bullshit. No one mentions the key point: selling and buying a bottle of vodka is perfectly legal in Pennsylvania (as long as the person selling the bottle is a State Store System employee or an employee of one of the very few licensees that offer bottle service, and the person purchasing it is of legal age). Giving it to a legal age woman is legal, whether or not she has children of any age. To suggest otherwise is sexist, foolish, and offensive.

In summation, I'm actually neutral on this, as far as the PLCB goes. I still say that a state agency acting like a retail business is simply absurd. But I don't see this as a particularly bad example of that absurdity, like, say, the Courtesy Contract was. On the other hand, the ISSU is a great example of the kind of bizarre situation that a state retail monopoly on booze sales can generate. Kill the State Store System as a favor to the ISSU: they hate selling alcohol...let them find a new, cleaner job selling something else.

Full disclosure, as always. I have a horse in this race: I got Cathy gin for Mother's Day, and I thought of it before I heard the ads (and I'm pretty sure she won't see this before tomorrow morning). She likes gin, and there's no reason she should suffer just because I usually prefer beer and whisky. So she's getting a hand-assembled gin bouquet; I think it turned out rather well.

First courtesy training, now this

The PLCB, fresh from blowing millions of your tax dollars out of their butts* with the Courtesy Contract and the Great Table Leaf Re-Branding, is now going to spend even more money...training PA police officers how to use Facebook.

It's not that simple -- it never is -- but it's close. As you probably know, underaged drinkers are often dumb enough to post their drunking (intentional misspelling) pix on social networking sites. Hell, everyone knows it, and has known it, as this story about it from 2006 shows. The Bensalem PD is already using it for their own horny purposes. But that's not going to stop the PLCB from spending more bux to jump on this.

Here's the syllabus for the 8 hour course:

According to Leslie Coombe, director of the Liquor Control Board's Bureau of Alcohol Education, the Navigating Cyberspace training will cover:

•Social networking sites and how young people use them;
•What distinguishes social networking sites from one another;
•How to navigate social networking sites; and
•How to develop information from social networking sites into evidence.

So that would be:

• Facebook, MySpace, craigslist, Twitter -- Farmville; pix of chix and crappy music; all beer u can drunkk $5 dude; LOL RT LOL!
• Your mom's on FB too, MySpace looks like a cat threw it up, craigslist is about the bux, Twitter s shrt lol.
• Create a false identity. Login. Start friending/following like mad; lie when necessary. Click on links. Txt. Google site for "beers" "crunk" and "funnel". Call it a day, go get a beer.
• Lie to some kid about who you are, get an invite to a party. Show up with the squad, arrest all the kids you can catch, bust the owners of the house, too.
• And one more thing: Entrapment Is Something That Happens to Other Cops.

Hey, officer, just kidding about that last one, really. But I'd love to see what the folks at the Chambersburg Public Opinion would have done with this one. We're sending police officers to school for a day to learn how to Facebook? Are you kidding? My mechanic told me his small-town PD has a cyber-enforcement unit. Cops are up to speed already, and if they aren't, a one-day course ain't gonna do it. God, this reminds me of the narc convention in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.

I did say it wasn't quite as simple as the others, and here's another reason. The money comes from a grant...from the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association, the "business association" of control states' liquor monopolies. Where does their money come from? To tell the truth, I don't know (I do now; see below). Google has, for now, failed me. But I do have a call in to them, asking that very question, and I'm hoping for an answer (because I'm writing a piece about this, too). But if NABCA is funded by the control states' booze agencies...guess what that means? Give you a hint: those aren't monkeys flying out of your butt.

Update: I did get back with the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association, and it turns out that they get only a small amount of money from the states, less than a third of their operating budget. Most of their funds come from selling reports to investment analysis firms, the booze industry, and importers/wholesalers; they have solid, gilt-edged data from the states (it's every sale from every store in the state, as opposed to the patchwork reports from private-sale states), and it's valuable. Good idea, actually. So...no fear, the PLCB's wasting someone else's money this time. Whew.


*Paraphrasing a great line from one of my fave movies, "The Iron Giant," where Gen. Rogard says "You realize how much hardware I brought out here? You just blew millions of Uncle Sam's dollars out of your butt!" I know just how he feels...and yeah, Joe "CEO" Conti, it was our tax dollars, because if you hadn't wasted it on this project, it would have gone into the general fund, where it would have become fungible revenue. PLCB revenue wasted is the same as taxes to cover the hole.

Whose Money Is It To Spend?

The latest bone-headed idea from the PLCB? Change the name of the State Stores. Steve Twedt, at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, reported on this over the weekend. This is part of the $3.7 million "rebranding" boondoggle the PLCB has engaged in, for truly questionable reasons.

Happily, there is at least one person in Harrisburg who sees this for the worthless idea it is: Governor Ed Rendell. According the ever-spinning Chuck Ardo,

"The governor expressed his opinion that the PLCB stores as currently named were recognizable and had a brand value of their own and he strongly discouraged PLCB from attempting to change the names of the stores... The governor was vocal in making his opinion known."

However, as we're frequently reminded, the PLCB is an independent agency. Accordingly, Joe "CEO" Conti was not concerned about the governor's opinion. Indeed, it sounds like they may not have been at the same meeting:

[Conti] described the meeting with Mr. Rendell as "more a directional discussion" covering a wide range of topics. "The governor was delighted with everything he saw," said Mr. Conti.

Pardon my French, but one of these two guys is clearly full of crap. If you know Governor Rendell, you know what "strongly discouraged" and "vocal in making his opinion known" means. I'm pretty sure I know what "delighted with everything" means. I'm guessing the Governor is looking at Conti and feeling a bit like Victor Frankenstein.

But that's all silliness and name-calling. What this is really about is wasting your money. When this contract comes up, when the courtesy contract comes up, whenever the PLCB spends on consultants or signage or harassment of former Board members, the stock answer is always that it's not the taxpayer's money, they're a self-supporting agency and that their 'expenses' come out of the money they 'make' selling booze.

Could we cut the bull? The PLCB's real main argument for existence, the only reason they still have the monopoly on liquor and wine sales in Pennsylvania, is because of the money they funnel into the state's coffers. Three-quarters of that money is taxes, and we'll close our eyes and pretend that's a straight push-through. But a quarter of it is 'profits,' going into the general fund to be spent on programs to benefit the citizens of the Commonwealth. If this 'independent agency' is spending some of its gross on questionable stuff like changing the name of their monopoly stores, it is the taxpayer's money that is not going into the general fund.

Just how independent is the PLCB? Who exercises oversight on this agency? It's not the governor, clearly, as his "opinion" doesn't count for spit. Is it the Legislature? Don't know, although Conti and Stapleton were quick to dump most of the criticism of the PLCB's practices in their laps, as being responsible for The Almighty Liquor Code.

At least the PLCB is acting like a proper monopoly: high-handed, unaccountable, and arrogant.

"If the LCB were to find a cure for cancer..."

Either Governor Rendell or his press secretary, Chuck Ardo, apparently thinks people like me -- and maybe you -- are just anti-PLCB cranks. Check this out from that Pittsburgh Post-Gazette piece on the courtesy contract controversy:

Such criticism was to be expected from longtime critics of the PLCB, countered Chuck Ardo, a spokesman for Mr. Rendell. "The LCB decided their retail staff needed some training to ensure courteous service," he said. "If the LCB were to find a cure for cancer they would find a reason to criticize it."

"Cure for cancer"? In light of what's been going on lately, it seems more likely that someone at the LCB's brother-in-law would be peddling Laetrile, Chuck, and yeah, I'd criticize that.

In fact, even your own boss criticized the courtesy contract controversy...at least, until someone got to him and, er, pointed out the facts. Check it out, and how Chuck spun it right around (emphasis added, cuz I wouldn't want you to miss the important stuff...):

Mr. Rendell, when asked about the customer service training contract at a news conference, said it was the first he'd heard of it -- and of the relationship between the consulting firm's president and an PLCB manager. "If it's true, it's something that should be corrected," Mr. Rendell said.

But the governor made that comment before he had all the information about the contract, Mr. Ardo said. "He is not calling for the contract to be rebid," said Mr. Ardo. "He answered instinctively [because] the way the question was asked it seemed there might be a problem, but once the details unfolded it was clear there is no problem."

Clear? You bet! It's clear to me that Rendell's "instinctive" response to hearing about a fairly large state contract being let to the husband of a high-ranking agency manager was that it was "something that should be corrected." How much more information do you need? That it's "in compliance" with the state's Adverse Interest Act, according to LCB spokesman Nick Hays? Yeah, that's a tough standard. Check out the Post-Gazette's careful, damning parsing of that:

Hays said the contract was "in compliance" with the state's Adverse Interest Act, which among other things prohibits state employees from influencing contracts in which they have an interest.
The act also prohibits state employees from having an "adverse interest" in any contract with the state agency that employs them. The act defines that interest as being "a stockholder, partner, member, agent, representative or employee" of a company seeking such a contract. Hays said Susanne Hobart does not do any work for her husband's firm.

Let me get this straight. Is this coming from the same state agency that recently required an investor in Philadelphia brewpub Earth Bread + Brewery to sell his investment to his wife (because he was also an investor in another small Pennsylvania brewery, which might influence the managers of EB+B to buy beer from that brewery), and then further required his wife to sign an affadavit that her husband would never profit from her investment? Really?

Did they require Mrs. Hobart to sign a similar affadavit? They're married. The state's "Adverse Interest Act" doesn't cover that? I guess that's one of the "details" Chuck was talking about.

The Gov should follow his instincts more often.

Where the pig bought her lipstick

An interesting story surfaced today on the PLCB's 'charm school' efforts. Here's the nut, from today's Inquirer:

The president of the Pittsburgh-based company hired to train state liquor-store clerks and managers in the basics of being nice is married to one of the Liquor Control Board's top-level employees.
Buddy Hobart, president of the Solutions 21 consulting firm hired to conduct the training, is the husband of Susanne Hobart, the Liquor Control Board's regional manager in Pittsburgh. Hobart, who is paid $85,000 a year, is one of only three regional managers for the agency.
Liquor Control Board officials said yesterday that Susanne Hobart has no sway over contract matters in general and had no say over the $174,000 contract recently awarded to Solutions 21.

The contract, according to the PLCB, is "in compliance" with the state's Adverse Interest Act. Which is good, I'd hate to have it not be. Hobart's firm was one of five that bid, and submitted "the lowest and best" offer, according to the PLCB spokesperson. But my kids used to listen to John Flynn's The Duck Song when they were little, and I think it's instructive at this juncture:

If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck
And there's duck-do on your pick-up truck
Buddy you can bet your bottom buck
It ain't no armadillo

This contract looks like a duck, at this point. Haven't heard it quack yet. But...the husband of one of the PLCB's top managers (who will be getting the training, by the way) gets a juicy contract for services that, realistically, the PLCB doesn't even need -- monopoly, you gotta get your booze here cuz the law says you got no choice, remember? -- and they're telling us it's an armadillo. Maybe it is.

But maybe we should check the pick-up truck.

There's a better, more complete story at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, too.

More lipstick for the pig, and Joe Conti surfaces

From an AP story I saw in the Inquirer:

The PLCB is going to spend more of Pennsylvania taxpayers' money (that's money taken out of their 'contribution' to the general fund; more 'operating expenses') to pay a Pittsburgh company $173,820 this year to train State Store System managers "how to coach their staffers in the fundamentals of being good sales reps." This coaching will consist of teaching them "how to greet someone, where to stand, and how to read a customer's cues." Really, that's what they apparently believe the SSS clerks need to learn. I suppose we should be grateful that they're at least paying a Pennsylvania company to do the training.

Folks, this is more lipstick for the pig; it is, as I said here, about as natural as my dog walking on hind legs, wearing a dress, and smoking a cigar. This is not a business. It is a state-owned and mandated monopoly. The reason the PLCB is spending money on this is defensive. They want to keep you just satisfied enough to distract you from the reality of this unnatural situation.

It's pretty telling that the clerks will not receive any product training on wines and spirits under this program. No, they don't get that until they've learned courtesy. Amazing that the SSS has gone this long without realizing there might be a need for this stuff.

There are big ads in the Inquirer every week for the giant liquor/wine/beer superstores located just over the border in New Jersey and Delaware. Why are the ads in the Inky, why are the stores just across the border? Because Pennsylvanians shop there in droves, every week, because the State Store System either doesn't have what they want, doesn't have as good a price, or can't be bothered to give them good service and assistance.

The reason why is simple: the SSS has no incentive to deliver that. They're just doing their job, selling the bottles, and if you want them, okay, they'll sell them. But -- with a few, dedicated, interested exceptions -- the employees are not interested in helping you. They don't have to. All they have to do is keep the shelves stocked and ring up your purchase and bag it (don't try to bag it yourself, a lesson I learned; that's the one thing that will bring out passion in these folks as they quickly tell you you're not supposed to do that).

Now they're going to get training to be nice to people. To say 'Thank you.' Oh, boy. It changes nothing. The State Store System has to go. It is unresponsive, it is ridiculously, unnecessarily state-owned, and it is robbing Pennsylvanians of jobs.

Side bits of interest. PLCB "CEO" Joe Conti was quoted in the article, the first mention of him from the board in months. Has he been behind the scenes, working away? Maybe, though it's hard to believe a long-time legislator wouldn't have made sure he got his due. Has he been resting his ass in a job that most people assumed, from the way it was handed to him without any job search or serious interview process, was a total sinecure? Maybe, though I'd rather not think so. Hard to say.

The story also quoted Eric Epstein, identified as "a Harrisburg activist and founder of RockTheCapital.org." Epstein "politely called the idea 'a demented interpretation of happy hour.
It's a sad state of affairs when you have to train people to be kind and courteous,' he said, 'but I guess things are so bad that even booze peddlers have to pretend to be nice.'"

"Even booze peddlers." Thanks, Eric, you schmuck. It's not like they're pushing crack on street corners.