Wednesday, May 21, 2014

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?

2 comments:

Geno Washington said...

Why are there so few PLCB stores? It seems many people have to drive a long way to their closest one, and I'm talking about in the Philly area, not the rural parts of the state.

Also why did all the "must be 21 to enter store premises" signs disappear from the stores over time? Only about eight years ago these signs went up at what seemed like all the board's stores but have disappeared since then. Did the law change?

Albert Brooks said...

THe PLCB can't afford to have as many stores open as they used to. The labor costs are too high. There used to be over 750 stores and then the clerks unionized and it has dropped to the current 600 or so. Coincidence...maybe bit I doubt it.

The sign is still at my most local store.