I am sick and tired of the characterization of privatization supporters as "lazy drunks"

I've been reading the letters to the editors from people who think the world will end if liquor sales are privatized, or if beer is sold at gas stations, or if beer and wine are sold in the same place. What's worse, I've been reading the comments people leave on the web versions of those letters and stories. I shouldn't, I know, because they just drive me crazy...and here's why. 

I am sick and tired of hearing people who are just asking for the same kind of convenience they see in other states being called "lazy," or "alcoholics." We're "lazy" because we'd rather make one stop to buy our groceries...which in most other states includes the beer and wine? Am I supposed to believe that the people who call us lazy never stop at a convenience store for a bag of ice or a cold drink, instead of going to the grocery store? Man, that's lazy! Are we "alcoholics" because we'd like to buy our booze on a Sunday, or at the grocery store/drugstore/gas station...like normal people do in other states? Are they all alcoholics? I don't think so.

We aren't lazy, we aren't alcoholics, though it's easier to try to smear us like that rather than address what we're really saying. This is what we want:

• We want rid of Pennsylvania's antiquated alcohol laws.
• Get rid of the case law. ANY restrictions on how little or how much beer a person can buy in a single purchase should go. 
• End the State Stores, AND the state's monopoly on wholesale wine and liquor, which limits what wine and spirits we're "allowed" to buy to those selected by a committee in Harrisburg, without any input from the customers: us!
• We'd like to see an end to the strange limits on what beer distributors can and cannot sell: it's okay to sell soda, tobacco, snacks, and beer paraphernalia (like glassware), but they can't sell sandwiches, or more substantial food, or much else of anything, really. Why not? 
• We'd like to see an end to the bizarre requirement that a supermarket must have a cafe in order to sell beer. 
• We'd like to see the state have a normal number of retail wine outlets; that would be about 6,000, comparing our population and geographic size to those of other states. 
• We'd like to have a choice in where we buy our booze, not just one store that's the same store all across the state.
• We'd like to see an end to the police-enforced monopoly, and be able to buy wine and liquor in other states if we want to. For many of us in southeast PA, there are lots of great stores not far away, but buying there and bringing it home is illegal...which is insultingly unAmerican. 

We're not lazy; we're disgusted. We're not alcoholics; alcoholics don't care about inconvenience, they just do whatever's needed to get their drink. We don't want "alcohol," we want better selections of wines and spirits, we want a real choice on where to get them, and we want better service where we shop. We just want things to be normal in Pennsylvania.

And what we really want...is for the Legislature to take this up and get it done in September. Finish it.

Privatization is Not a Piñata

Looks like the Legislature's been here...

I'm looking at HB790, the proposal that Governor Corbett has put forward for privatization of the the State Store System, and it's becoming clear what the Legislature is in this for: the money. It's not about us, it's not about doing the right thing, it's not about doing what we want, it's about the money.

It's about campaign donations from the unions and businesses, it's about the tax revenue, it's about the shiny promise of a billion bucks in "windfall" money from license fees and wholesaler fees and higher fines and continuing fees... And like I always tell people in other states when their legislators want to raise booze taxes, where do you think all that money's going to come from? Duh, guys: out of your pockets. Because the wholesalers and the retailers aren't going to eat that increase (and no reason we should expect them to), it's part of the price of goods. So the higher the license fees...the higher the prices. It's just a tax under another name. Why, much as I'm pissed about Representative Taylor's planned amendment for HB790, at least he recognizes that, and lowered those fees.

The problem is that the Legislature doesn't look at the booze business like we do: producers and wholesalers and retailers all bringing the wines, spirits, and beers we love to shelves near us, hopefully sold by folks who have the same kind of passion for it that we do (or, hey, by guys who want to make picking up the basics quick and easy). They don't look at it like those in the industry do, as a fair business that makes a decent profit and pays good wages. They don't even look at it like MADD and the neo-prohibitionists do, as the devil's handmaidens, selling pure liquid evil.

No, the Legislature looks at the booze business -- brewers, distillers, vintners, importers; wholesalers, retailers; bars, delis, restaurants, taverns, stadium concessions -- as a big piñata, stuffed full of revenue, the money that makes things work in Harrisburg. Yes, the money that builds roads (and drips down to corrupt the fat cats), and pays for the State Police, and higher education, and state parks, and so on and so on, and it's also the money that gets doled out to make friends happy, and pay for patronage work, and all the semi-shady crap that's been going on in Harrisburg...it's all revenue, and that's really how the Legislature sees the booze business: a piñata, dangling in front of them, bulging with bucks, and the stick's in their hands.

Step right up, Senator! See the beer distributors, gorged with the fruits of their semi-monopoly? WHACK! The bars, making money in cash, helped along by the limited competition the licensing system creates? WHACK! The wholesalers, a layer of markup forced onto the others by three-tier laws -- WHACK! -- the brewers, newly successful craft brewers and the roaring Yuengling -- WHACK! -- Pennsylvania's wineries, ignored by the State Store but making people happy with festival fun -- WHACK! --the new distillers, better teach them how it works before they get too big -- WHACK! -- and the grocers and drugstores, wow, new blood! -- WHACK! WHACK!

 WHACK!

And then...the piñata breaks. The revenue tumbles out! Oh boy, grab it, shovel it into your committee bags, scoop it up to take home to your campaign contributors! Don't worry about the broken shell of the piñata. Don't worry; the system has limped along for decades, made to work by dedicated people who worked within the ridiculous cage of complicated laws you made, who did their best to try to bring the citizens what other states' peoples took for granted. It doesn't matter if you don't get this right: you've been ignoring what's wrong with the State Store System for over 40 years, you can ignore the mess you're going to make with privatization, too.

Don't let this happen. Call your representatives, email them, visit them if you can. Go to Facebook, tell Representative Taylor that you want real privatization, not some watered-down "modernization." Here are some talking points, bullet points, really.

• License fees are too damned high.
• There are too many different types of license, and the mistake of the "case law" is repeated in multiples with all the different arbitrary limits on how much each license can sell in one transaction.
• Beer distributors should not be charged a special fee to sell sixpacks, and there shouldn't be a minimum sale of a sixpack: do away with these ridiculous minimum and maximum sales altogether.
• Privatize fully, NOW. Give them 6 months. 

Don't break the system to get at all the money inside. Free it up, and collect the extra taxes you'll get when people no longer feel the need, the urge, to avoid the screwed-up mess we have and buy across the border.

And most of all...there is no windfall. If the State Store System really were the "valuable public asset" the unions keep trying to tell us it is, some company would be offering you money to take it over and run it. It's not. It's an annoyance. The people of the state despise it, and can't wait to see it gone. Forcing the new licensees to pay for it is just...whacking the piñata.
 

The State Stores have had 80 years to get it right. They haven't, they won't. Game over. PRIVATIZE.