A great article written by Tom Cowell. It does not matter if you live here or not, this is a perfect example of how patronage, greed, mismanagement at the government level will poison anything it touches.
PLCB, SEPTA, Game Commission, no mater what government touches it will, in the current systems become ineffective, poisoned and taken over by a bunch of leaches who only want “theirs” and forget that government is meant to serve the people.
Part of our Liquor Control Bureau’s solution?
The plan, apparently designed to sell as little product as possible, promises to deliver a bizarre customer experience. Patrons use a touch screen to select the wine they want and blow into a breathalyzer to confirm their sobriety (get used to the phrase “state-store cold sore”). Then, the customer must swipe his or her ID, and be photographed by a camera connected to a communication center in Harrisburg, where a state LCB employee can confirm the person’s identity.
LCB’s spokesman Nick Hays believes the machines will “increase consumer convenience and provide better … service.” Surely customers would be better served by having more full-service stores than experimenting with so-far untested and rather creepy technology. The LCB, which runs the state's wine and spirits stores and directly employs all 4,000 clerks and managers throughout the system, proclaims the initiative “unprecedented,” and Pennsylvania will indeed be the first state in the nation to sell wine out of a vending machine.
Yes it is “unprecedented” and yes no doubt Pennsylvania will be the first. I guess they never got to the part of “Is there a reason why no one else is doing this?” If I wanted to buy wine from a vending machine (which I don’t, now will I ever), how do I know that the breathalyzer mouthpiece is clean? How do I know it is accurate? What happens if the person before me was tanked and the system records me as tanked as well, what are the repercussions?
So why don’t lawmakers bring our liquor laws out of the 1930s?
A heavily unionized workforce with hefty lobbying power has a lot to do with it. Wendell Young, whose Local 1776 represents the majority of front-line workers in the state stores, makes no secret of his union's political influence.
“We’ve never denied that our first and primary concern is the job security of our members, and we will work very hard to support the system to support their livelihoods,” he says.
Over innumerable election cycles, that support includes hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from paycheck-funded Political Action Committees to legislators who write the state’s booze laws. “The lifeblood of politics is political contributions, I don’t like it … but that’s the system we have,” says Young.
Straightforward government inertia also blocks legal reform; because the liquor code in Pennsylvania is so uniquely restrictive, even the smallest proposed changes are likely to enrage some special interest or constituency. Try to allow six-pack sales in supermarkets and the beer-distributor trade associations will attack. Try to open more stores on Sundays (the law today restricts it to only 25 percent of outlets) and the store managers’ union may protest that their membership prefers not to work through the weekend. Try to encourage more stores and a thousand constituents will scream “Not on my block.” As a legislator, it’s easier to skip the battles entirely. It seems a mismatched fight—a few special interests and their lobbyists against the overwhelming dissatisfaction of voters statewide.
Try to open stores on Sundays and union management and members don’t want to work……. What was the unemployment rate (post stimulus), oh that’s right 10+%, with underemployment etc. over 17%
This entire article is a well written, and easily read piece, and yes it is directed to our State’s antiquated control of booze, but it applies, like I said above, to everything government; schools, Medicare, Social Security, VA. It also exposes some of the reasons why companies like GM are in the pickle they are. When the union is forcing issues solely for the union members and forgets about the customer, sooner or later the customer will get fed up and put the company (and the union) out of business.
Since the Supreme Court has told Pennsylvania to allow the mailing of wines into the Commonwealth, a good place to start is for all of us here to do just that.
PA’s Disgraceful Liquor Laws | News and Opinion | Philadelphia Weekly
