Hey, people get passionate about their drinks – especially when those drinks are restricted at the hands of a state monopoly that jacks prices up. Not to mention, the selection sucks and if you try to buy out-of-state, you are committing a crime.
In his August newsletter, Keith Wallace of the Wine School of Philadelphia made a pitch for Tom Corbett. As he says, “… I have gained assurances that Gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett will make reforming the PLCB an element of his administration.â€
This is significant because, besides being a well respected person amongst the wine circles in the Philadelphia area, he also isn’t your expected Corbett supporter. “After all,†he says, “I am a former NPR journalist and Democratic operative [originally] from Massachusetts.â€
This shows two very important things. First, the PLCB is a significant enough of an issue to get people to be a one issue voter across party lines. Second, while there is the debate between both sides on where the line is drawn on the appropriate role of government, the PLCB crosses that line for many people.
I would love to be part of the wine vote coalition. Our state rep already knows that we’re all about the guns and letting our wine & beer run free. (Although getting rid of our stupid beer laws will be another tough sell, and much harder to do.)
I feel for y’all, but somehow…….
You should live where I do. Here in LA (That’d be ‘Lower Arkansas’), the nearest off sale establishment is 32 miles away, as the highways run. And the selection isn’t notably stellar, either. If I want anything other than the big selling cheap stuff, it’s 55 or 60 miles each way, and then it’s still not any better than you get.
And I can feel for you having to “violate the law” by bringing it in from out of State. Up until three years ago, it was illegal to possess any more than a case of beer at one time, if you lived in a dry county.
Get them to start arresting the wealthy folks and they’ll change the law. That’s what happened with the “overpossession” law down here. Folks up in Rodgers, Bentonville, and whatnot, discovered that the County Law could come confiscate their wine cellar, if they had more than a dozen bottles in it. Bootlegging, don’t you know?
It got changed really quickly once that started happening.
There’s a difference when you’re talking about lack of selection due to the rural nature of your area vs. crappy selection when you live in the suburbs just a few miles from one of the largest cities in the country. Sure, things are bad in other places, but rather than having pissing contests, I’d like to think up ways to dismantle all of the systems. I didn’t have nearly the problems with selection in Virginia under their state monopoly on hard liquor, but that’s because I could buy wine anywhere. (The big beef I had with liquor sales was the crappy hours the stores around me maintained.) But, they are looking at privatizing their liquor sales.