Senator Rafferty Comes Out Swinging

I have no time to blog about this -- working feverishly on PA Breweries 4 -- but big news yesterday in Harrisburg: State Senator John C. Rafferty (Montgomery-R) held a "rally" for reforming PA's beer laws, the main aim being to allow six-pack sales in grocery stores, convenience stores, and distributors. Read about it here, here (one of Karen Heller's best columns), and most of all here, in Rafferty's own talking points memo (this is a PDF, just to warn you). I'll be back to talk about this when I'm done with the book.

Two things, though. First, thanks to Stan Sheetz, CEO of the PA-based convenience store chain, for really pushing this issue. Second, to the distributors and six-pack store owners and employees who stand to face competition and possibly job losses from this issue: this day was bound to come. Instead of burning your time, money, and customer goodwill by fighting it in courts or the press, step up and compete. Cooperate to get the best possible bill for yourselves. Here's a plan: go for the package store system they have in Massachusetts. Instead of just "fixing" beer sales, do away with the State Store System and make beer distributors eligible to be "all-alcohol" stores, and that's where people buy their booze, from private stores, supplied by privately-owned wholesalers or directly from the suppliers. How's that sound? Radical, hey?

Double-posted to Seen Through A Glass.

Wine sales? Keep them in the State Store, please

With the opening of the first State Store grocery just around the corner on Tuesday, here's something to make you think about just how unfair that is. Read about why it just doesn't make sense to serve wine in Pennsylvania. Then think about why some of you don't understand why it would make sense to get rid of the State Store System monopoly. And come to your senses, will you?

I swear, I'm going to stop buying anything at the State Stores, law be damned. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a mass protest that someone thought up: a thousand wine lovers go to NJ, and walk back across the Ben Franklin Bridge with a bottle of New Jersey-bought wine. Are they going to arrest us? This is more than ridiculous: it's insulting.

Virginia's new governor talks privatization

Virginia's new governor wants to privatize liquor sales in the Old Dominion State, and he's willing to talk plainly about it; no pussyfooting. More power to him. We need someone like this in PA, eh?

(I dunno about that host guy's leather jacket, though...)

Big anti-PLCB piece in Philadelphia Weekly

The issue of Philadelphia Weekly that came out yesterday features a lengthy anti-PLCB screed by Tom Cowell; nice work. (There was a good editorial on the wine kiosks the day before in the Lebanon Daily News, too.) The blog got some mention (bottom of page 2), but much much more importantly, Cowell had clearly been reading it and getting ideas: the number of stores compared to Chicago, how relatively little money we actually get from a complete monopoly on booze sales, the stupidity of the rebranding scheme, the way the PLCB is really just the tool of the legislature.

Which is exactly why this blog is here, to inspire thought and action. Cowell took it and ran with it, talked to union head Wendell Young, found some more issues (the patronage inherent in the State Store System, for example), and got a new crowd of folks stirred up. I'm very happy to see it happen.

Keep spreading the word. PRIVATIZE IT NOW!

(And if you feel like supporting me in the comments to this piece...feel free, but remember to keep it on track: it's all about abolishing the PLCB and rewriting The Almighty Liquor Code!)

Wino 9000

Okay, it's silly and juvenile, but I'll admit it: I giggled. Take a look at someone who has treated the wine kiosk ideas with exactly what they deserve: derision.

New Year's Resolutions

It's that time of year when we think about how to make ourselves better in the coming year. I'm thinking about how to make this blog better.

Write more Reasons. I haven't written a Reason in months. I will do that.

Get the Winevolk involved. We've barely touched what is possibly the second-worst aspect of the State Store System (after what they've done with bourbon): the wine selection. Plenty of room to rip 'em a hole: signage, storage, selection, selling...just to name a few.

Beat up The Almighty Liquor Code. Pennsylvania could be made a lot more pleasant place to enjoy a drink -- not get all liquored up, but enjoy a drink -- if certain ridiculous things were added to and subtracted from The Almighty Liquor Code. Make more suggestions on that.

Get the mainstream media more involved. Letters to the editor, e-mails to reporters, call-ins to radio shows. Get everyone up to speed on just how dopey this system is.

Get some video going on. You know what I mean: video of those wine kiosks in operation, right here on the blog. I'm gonna be a vidstar!

Bring the beer. Though I continue to complain about the State Store System, we all know that this state's kinda messed up on beer, too (and it ain't just the case law). Beer gets more attention.

That should do. Happy New Year, Pennsylvania!

Pocono Record has it right...

Oh, yeah, brother: preach it:

...the wine kiosks smack more than a little of Big Brother. Without a live person monitoring wine purchases, consumers will face some pretty intrusive procedures before they can walk out of the supermarket with a bottle of cabernet to go with their steak au poivre.

The editorialist at the Pocono Record puts their finger right on the wine kiosk problem. When you buy a bottle of wine at a private store in New Jersey/New York/Delaware/Maryland/etc., that's all you buy: a bottle of wine, and you walk away. When you buy a bottle of wine from one of these Wine-O-Mats, you buy a lot more: you buy a breathalyzer test, you buy an ID scan linked to what you bought (and how much you bought), you buy the knowledge of how much wine you buy over a year, and -- at least, according to the head of the PLCB's employees' union -- you buy an etched code on the bottle that links it to you...and all of that goes on your permanent record.

Is that what you want from your government? Big Brother literally looking out at you from some ridiculous wine-vending machine, sniffing your breath and taking your picture just so you can get a bottle of Yellow Tail (because I'm sure there will be Yellow Tail in these things, they've got a whole section of their own in the stores)? I mean, I'm not a huge fan of the Patriot Act, but at least I can understand why the government might want to listen on phone lines to pick up terrorist activity...why the hell do they want to keep a record of which bottle of wine I bought? What damned business is it of theirs?

It might be time to throw some bottles of wine in the Philadelphia harbor...