PLCB - 85 Years to Get It Moving in the Right Direction and They Still Fail

Those of us who have put up with the restricted system of alcohol access in Pennsylvania would expect to see some results from the 85 years of the state's social experiment. The results are in, but no one's talking about them (except us), because the PLCB fails miserably. Using data from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Newsweek ranked the states by their alcohol use.

So far it ain't working.  Look at the states on our border:

1. New York - Lower consumption than Pennsylvania
2. New Jersey  - Lower consumption than Pennsylvania
3. Ohio - Lower consumption than Pennsylvania
4. West Virginia - Lower consumption than Pennsylvania
5. Maryland - Lower consumption than Pennsylvania

If you don't succeed, quit after failing 80+ times.

Only Delaware has a higher consumption rate than Pennsylvania! But that's not really fair, because these rates are based on sales, not actually tallying people's drinks, and we know that a significant portion of sales in Delaware are from Pennsylvania residents in search of better prices, selection, and service. Those superstores on the border with Pennsylvania aren't there at random.

Is this the PLCB's fault? It has to be: there is no alcohol that isn't under their control. They are responsible for how beer is sold, they just don't do it directly, exactly the same as the alcohol regulators in other states work. Even their report on underage binge drinking shows they aren't doing what they are supposed to be doing. Pennsylvania's rate is worse than the national average, and not getting any better.

The State Stores are never checked for underage sales - yea!

Maybe the DUI and DUI fatalities make up for it.  No, you don't want to go there. You'll just be disappointed again; more proof that the Pennsylvania system isn't working.

If they're not "controlling" drinking, what is the PLCB doing? Surprise! They are a jobs program ingrained deep into state government, protected by politicians dependent on union money and votes. It has nothing to do anymore with protecting the public, nothing to do with enforcement of the border (what, 3 arrests last year? Wow...), nothing to do with service, and certainly nothing to do with treating the public fairly.

No, the only thing the PLCB is interested in is squeezing the citizens for more money. Prices increase when better deals are brokered, in the name of "variable pricing," which was sold to us as a way to lower prices of popular brands. No! It's a way to make more money, but not for the State, it's to cover their ever-increasing operations costs!  What other business decreases their number of stores by 25%...yet has more employees?

They don't even know their own name! Are they Wine & Spirits Shoppes? Pennsylvania Wine & Spirits ? Fine Wine & Good Spirits? We paid $3 million for the Fine & Good, you'd think they would want to use that everywhere. Might as well have saved that money -- our money -- and stuck with what most people call them even without a sign - State Stores.

PLCB Sales

PLCB Liabilities

The people in charge have no experience in the business. Prices are raised arbitrarily -- everything is done arbitrarily! -- and customer service is unimportant, because they have no legal competition. They've had record sales almost every year, but they're deeper in debt than anytime in their history...and it doesn't matter, because in the end, the taxpayers are really the ones responsible for that debt.

We, the citizens, deserve better. We are not safer, we are not better served, and we are not satisfied.

PRIVATIZE NOW.

What the PLCB does to Pennsylvania

Are we better off with the PLCB? Or is the PLCB causing active harm to Pennsylvania? It's not a set-up question, it deserves real consideration. When the PLCB claims credit, saying "We do all this good stuff," we should look at the claims and see if the "stuff" really is "good." Here are some of their top claims for good; see what you think.

1. PLCB prices are competitive.
In reality, this depends on what private store you compare them too but overall, according to the National Institute of Health, the average bottle of liquor cost just over $2.00 more in a control state than in a free state. And since this study was done before the PLCB started flexibly screwing us, it is probably more now. You don't wind up with real liquor superstores clustered on the border because they charge more.

2. The PLCB limits underage drinking.
When looking at the PLCB's own report (2017) Pennsylvania's underage drinking is at least 7% higher than the national average for grades 8, 10 and 12. What's worse, you can reasonably assume that the number is even higher since the two largest school districts did not participate - Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

3. The PLCB limits DUI's & DUI fatalities
Using information provided by Responsibility.Org we find that for:
Percent of Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities of Total Fatalities - NJ, MD and WV are lower than PA. NY is tied and Ohio (a control state) and DE are worse.
12-20 Year Old Binge Drinking in Past 30-days : PA only beats WV of the border states.
12-20 Year Old Past Month Alcohol Consumption: PA is only better than WV (barely) and NY
Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities per 100K population: PA is in the middle with 3 better and 3 worse.
Under 21 Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities per 100K population: Again, PA is in the middle.
There is no clear benefit from the PLCB's "control." It appears to have no effect.

4. The PLCB limits sales to minors.
According to Stacey Witalec, then Director of External Affairs at the PLCB: "... because our stores are not licensed establishments, BLCE does not perform compliance checks in them." Since they are never checked by an independent group, then claiming they are made of green cheese has as much validity.

5. The PLCB turns in (cue Donald Trump voice) Huuuuuge amounts of money every year. 
Despite the appearance given by the taxes which pass through the stores, and the "contributions" that are required by the General Assembly, the PLCB had $1.8 BILLION in liabilities in January 2018. They owe well over $230 million in pension debt. In 84 years only 3 times did they contribute over 0.3% of the budget.

6. The PLCB provides 5,000 family sustaining jobs.  
About 40% of the store workforce are part-time. If those jobs are "family sustaining," then something isn't right.

7. The people that select wine and spirits are highly knowledgeable.
Except none have the highest regarded certificates of excellence in their profession. You never hear or see Pennsylvania leading the way in new trends, cocktails, or liquors. They always follow.

8. The "Chairman's" programs are great deals.
Until you realize that most of these didn't sell well in the free market, where there is strong competition, which is why they are cheap for the PLCB to buy.

The PLCB is just a way to take money from you the citizens to keep their bloated, inefficient jobs program alive. They do nothing for the state and everything for themselves.

Privatize.

The Buffalo Trace and Pappy Van Winkle poster contest!

HARRISBURG, Pa., Oct. 15, 2018 /PVWNewswire/ -- The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) wants to get more underage students involved in their anti-drinking poster contest...and has also started a pro-drinking poster contest to publicize the agency's lottery of rare whiskeys.

A PLCB employee (who was not authorized to lie like the official spokesperson) explained it this way. "There are millions of kids in the Commonwealth, and most of them are drinking more than the kids in New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Ohio, Maryland, or West Virginia, so they don't seem to be that interested in making posters. The adults aren't either; they don't see how important working with L.C. Bee* is: posters can make a real difference!"

These are Daddy's favorites.... 
until he gets some Pappy!
A brilliant first effort from a 10th grader in Shamokin Dam 
that advertises some State Store best-sellers!

The breakthrough moment came when some bureaucrat at the agency had a brain-surge: put a carrot on the stick! "We knew that the adults were interested in hard-to-find whiskeys," the completely unauthorized source continued, "so we thought, 'Why not allow the people who submitted the best posters an inside chance at the limited release lotteries!' That gets the adults involved, and they'll make sure the kids make posters too, so they can try and score some rare bottles! It is the perfect synergy: parents getting involved in their kid's activities, and kids learning about drinking from their folks. And when they grow up and buy more, the PLCB gets more revenue to give to the Commonwealth! After we skim off our ever-increasing operations expenses, that is."

Mom bought these at the PLCB!

This poster contest also teaches kids about business. It's pure supply and demand; almost like the real world (except in Pennsylvania, where the PLCB is somewhere in the middle, shifting the market). Kids get to learn about secondary (gray) markets, cost/value, and stupidity — all at the same time! Not to mention the art and illustration practice, drawing all those bottles and labels that we expect to see in the posters!


No, this isn't real. But if it were? We're sure it would be another example of a PLCB idea no one can remember who came up with, or find any paperwork on it. Like the house brands or wine kiosks. 

Privatize.

*

L.C. Bee! He's real! He's coming
for your parents,
the chronic alcohol abusers!

You can't fix stupid

Yes, it is true: you can't fix stupid. No matter what the clerks' union comes up with, it will never get away from the image of what was quite possibly the most inane advertisement ever to be put on Pennsylvania's airwaves. It is so bad in so many ways that the entire nation is laughing at the state, and the idiots who put this together for broadcast.



That bunch of idiots would be the UFCW Local 1776 media office and an outfit called Strategic Communications (the link is provided in case you want to put this gang of ham-handed 'communicators' on your company's Do Not Call list). It is so bad that one of the union's own members said on Facebook, "I work for this system and I personally find this ad embarrassing. Their true intentions are to keep our jobs (which I do not mind), but Ads like these are utterly ridiculous." Obviously he wishes to remain anonymous.

I have not seen one positive response anywhere. I would like to read one just to get an idea of what kind of person thinks this was a good idea.  Those that don't are legion,  If you haven't seen the stories, here are a baker's dozen of them. Be sure to read the comments: they just don't get any better.

1.) http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/05/04/union-privatizing-the-sale-of-alcohol-will-kill-children-lower-tax-revenue/

2.) http://fermentationwineblog.com/2014/05/worst-alcohol-related-ad-history-world/

3.) http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/unions-panicking-possible-liquor-privatization-pennsylvania-video/#axzz30tTcJtUY

4.) https://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2014/05/state-liquor-store-union-pulls-out-the-stops-new-ad-explains-that-selling-beer-in-grocery-stores-kills-children/

5.) http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/377162/union-monopoly-protects-pennsylvania-children-drunken-slaughter-tim-cavanaugh

6.) http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/audio/1562-chris-stigall-show/the-chris-stigall-show-wendell-young/

7.) http://tinyurl.com/njtuhwc (About 7 minutes in)

8.) http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/entertainment/television/WATCH-UFCWs-hilariously-bad-anti-liquor-privatization-ad-.html

9.) http://reason.com/blog/2014/05/02/pennsylvanians-cant-buy-beer-and-wine-at

10.) http://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/policyblog/detail/will-more-choice-and-convenience-really-kill-your-kids

11.) http://www.nationalmemo.com/watch-the-craziest-political-ad-of-2014/

12.) http://philly.barstoolsports.com/around-barstool/video-anti-liquor-privatization-ad-says-pa-selling-beer-at-convenience-stores-will-kill-one-child-every-week/

13,) And my own lambasting published here last week.

Enjoy, have fun and don't laugh too hard. Remember: this year privatization killed the little girl; last year, they killed her father. If this drags on one more year...that's going to be a pretty lonely ad campaign. But it's still going to be stupid, because there's just no way this line of reasoning is ever going to make sense.

State Store Stings?

I have a Facebook page about this subject, Abolish the PLCB -- Rewrite the Code! (feel free to join, if you haven't already), and there are some serious PLCB apologists who joined and post counters to privatization. I suspect they're PLCB employees (present or retired) or fellow union members, but I have no proof...and my suspicions are mostly based on my incredulity that anyone else would support the PLCB, I'll admit that.

Anyway, one of them was posting a number of news reports (from other states) about sting operations that had resulted in arrests of liquor store staff or owners making sales to minors. This would always be accompanied by crowing about how privatization would bring more sales to minors, and that the PLCB clerks never ever sell to minors. Well, that's probably not actually true, because I've noticed that PLCB supporters have just started saying that there were only two sales to minors in the past 7 years, but that's still pretty impressive.

Only...wait a minute. Just how cozy is the relationship between PLCB store clerks and Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement agents? So I started responding to all his posts: "Hey, does the BLCE ever conduct stings on State Stores? Just asking!" Never got a response.

To tell the truth...I don't know. Do they? Because if they don't...it's a meaningless statistic. I'd say I'd like to see it happen, but honestly? I wouldn't, because the way the regs are set up, any PLCB clerk who sells to an underage purchaser loses their job and their pension. I wouldn't want to see that just to prove a point. But...in the absence of such stings, this is comparing apples and oranges. Stick a pin in this balloon.

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.