Recklessly Killing More Pennsylvanians

The Pennsylvania State Police are warning that the streets will become more dangerous if a major reform law is passed. For once, it’s not just gun owners being picked on for basic reforms. Today, it’s bar owners. What’s got the panties of law enforcement in a twist? Surely if they are warning that our streets will be flooded with drunks, it’s got to be something dramatic, right? Like making it legal to hand out bottles of tequila instead of mints with the bar tab?

One part of the new bill would mean changes to “happy hour.”

Under current state law, bars and taverns are allowed to reduce their alcohol prices for no more than two hours per day. In the proposed bill, establishments would still be limited to 14 hours of lower prices per week, but would be allowed to divide up the hours in any way.

Bars would be allowed to hold a four-hour “happy hour” for Monday Night Football or for a Sunday afternoon NASCAR race, said state Rep. John Payne (R-Dauphin), the bill’s sponsor.

Oh the humanity! Our children will all be run over by drunks because a bar can offer happy hour specials for 3 hours instead of 2! Yes, the PSP is actually warning lawmakers off of this dangerous new proposal.

These would be the same PSP folks who raided Philadelphia bars & stole gallons of beer from lawful business owners because they didn’t know how to read beer labels.

The bars – which specialized in foreign beers and craft brews – were raided in March and more than 300 bottles of beer and two kegs were confiscated. A subsequent investigation revealed police conducting the raids mistakenly confiscated legal beers because they misunderstood the some of the labels and the state’s list of legal beers contained misspellings and other errors.

I’m not anti-law enforcement, I’m just anti-stupid. When the department staff can’t even read a beer label to figure out if it’s legal or not, I have less than full faith that they have done serious research or have fully documented facts and figures to back up their warnings to lawmakers about a minor alcohol sales reform bill.

7 thoughts on “Recklessly Killing More Pennsylvanians”

  1. If they can’t read a beer label how do we know they can shoot the right bad guy under stress?

  2. Wait, Pennsylvania regulates minimum prices a bar can sell booze for?

    Damn!

  3. There oughta be a law against high-capacity hours of low-cost beer. Low prices should be limited at a clip of 10 hours per week.

  4. Wes, those hours are currently capped at 14 hours per week. Because we know its the 15th hour in a week that will cause every beer drinker to lose his/her mind & head out onto the street with their dangerous cars & kill innocent kids.

    Stan, I hope we don’t have to worry about that division of PSP using their guns very often. I’d hate to think they actually would shoot a bartender over a beer whose label they couldn’t read.

  5. The state doesn’t regulate minimum prices, other than acting through its monopoly to do so. It regulate how many hours a week bars and reduce their prices off whatever their baseline is.

  6. So, can they sell 50 cent beers as a baseline and simply increase the price to $3.00 per beer from 6:00 pm till midnight?

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