Bitter – Page 116 – Shall Not Be Questioned

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.

Politics into a Language We All Understand

It can be hard for most people to grasp the problems with government spending because it comes in the form of numbers that no one person can really identify with in any meaningful way. You know that $459 billion is a lot of money. And it’s more money than you’ll ever see in your bank account (unless there’s one hell of a bank error in your favor), but just how that compares to trillions of dollars is out of the realm of the average person. So that’s why this video succeeds at putting the issue of the federal deficit in terms we can all understand: liquor.

About that Football Game…

I think the best commentary was this:

You know who won the Super Bowl? Arianna Huffington.

AOL bought HuffPo for $315 million last night. Based on the claims in their press release, they have about 25 million unique visitors a month. Let’s consider just how much that really is. Scaling down based on traffic, AOL could pay well over $600K for this blog. When I did the math and shared that news with Sebastian, he said he would sell. For anything over half a million, I guess we could be blog neighbors with Paul Helmke.

Obama Throws the Brady Campaign a Bone

I guess the White House could only hold out against the onslaught of grassroots action from the gun control crowds for so long.

President Obama delivered a 10-minute-long inaudible and untelevised speech on gun control Thursday, addressing the politically volatile topic from behind the closed doors of the Oval Office, where nobody could see or hear him. “The Second Amendment doesn’tâ€¦” said Obama, who trailed off and gently whispered a number of strong, definitive statements that were muffled by the hand in front of his face.

Go read the whole thing for more details on this major policy speech.

Charging People for Services They Didn’t Use

Monopolies & the government regulators who serve them are always able to come up with such creative ways to fleece taxpayers.

Under a little-noticed decision by Maryland regulators, Pepco for years has been authorized to raise rates temporarily to recover money it loses when electricity use drops. The system was meant to encourage energy conservation.

But as an unintended consequence, customers could help make the company whole for outage-related losses next month by paying Pepco more than they would have otherwise. The higher rates would apply to all Maryland customers, including those who shivered in the dark for days.

“They are paying for delivery of electricity they did not receive,” said Eric Friedman, director of the Montgomery County Office of Consumer Protection.

I would say that it’s the law on unintended consequences at work, but we can see that there’s nothing unintended about it.

But in Maryland, the billing adjustment is colliding with a string of outages at Pepco in the past year. Some critics have said that the billing system has removed any incentive for Pepco to reduce outages or to rush to restore service once the lights go out. Either way, Pepco is guaranteed the same rate of return. …

A Washington Post investigation published in December found that Pepco’s day-to-day reliability began declining five years ago and that Pepco ranks at or near the bottom in national surveys of reliability. The average Pepco customer experienced 70 percent more outages than customers of other utilities in major metropolitan areas.

Hat tip to @DonIrvine.

A Song for Your Stalker Romance

We’ve been listening to Alfie Boe’s Bring Him Home ever since it (finally) arrived from the UK a week or so ago. One of the songs he covers is “On the Street Where You Live,” a favorite of mine from My Fair Lady.

This evening, after comparing a few versions of the song, Sebastian made the following observation. This might be a romantic song, but if you tried to sing it today, you’d only end up with a restraining order. For those of you unwilling to enjoy a show tune, here are the key lyrics:

I have often walked down this street before;
But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before.
All at once am I Several stories high.
Knowing I’m on the street where you live.
Are there lilac trees in the heart of town?
Can you hear a lark in any other part of town?
Does enchantment pour Out of ev’ry door?
No, it’s just on the street where you live!
And oh! The towering feeling
Just to know somehow you are near.
The overpowering feeling
That any second you may suddenly appear!
People stop and stare. They don’t bother me.
For there’s no where else on earth that I would rather be.
Let the time go by, I won’t care if I
Can be here on the street where you live.

Always Recruiting for the Cause

I kind of miss the gun-themed custom license plates I’d see around Northern Virginia. There was a minivan with AR15FAN. One vehicle driving out of a shopping plaza near my old apartment had a Virginia NRA plate with LFE MBR. Another truck in the NRA parking lot had HCI LIES. So I am amused that a blog dedicated to amusing custom plates found this one by someone who is hopefully a recruiter:

(Photo courtesy of GR8 PL8S.)

A Bad Sign for the Democrats

I actually found this shortly before the election, but I forgot about the pictures on my phone until recently. When I found this card, I looked for a similar anti-Republican one for lefties, but there was none to be found.

Wasted Money: Advertising Wine & Liquor in Pennsylvania

In the last week, I’ve had two wineries run ads that popped up for me on Facebook. Â Unfortunately, it’s another example of how government regulation leads to more waste in the economy. Â How is a Facebook ad an example of wasted money due to government intervention in the market? Â Stick with me here while I explain:

Victim 1: Elyse Winery
All wine sold in Pennsylvania is governed by bureaucrats at the PLCB. According to the law, we cannot even purchase it out-of-state and bring it back in. According to the PLCB’s website, there are exactly 3 bottles available to the entire state. Three freakin’ bottles for the entire state of Pennsylvania, and they are located about an hour from here. What are the chances I’m actually going to go try their product? I would have been open to trying a new wine if a liquor store near me carried it, or there were more than 3 bottles in the entire state. As it is, I just felt sorry for the winery owners who are wasting their precious cash advertising to Pennsylvania residents who can’t even buy their wines (unless they live near the store the bureaucrats have deemed “worthy” to carry the Elyse product).

Victim 2: Gracianna Winery
The bureaucrats at the PLCB have decided not to allow us taxpayers to sample any products made by Gracianna Winery. We cannot special order (at a minimum of 6 bottles, typically), nor can we find it for sale at any retail outlets.

Victim 3: Chambord Flavored Vodka
Black raspberry-flavored vodka sounds intriguing. I first heard about it via an advertisement on a SEPTA bus driving around this area. Unfortunately, none of state stores located near the bus route actually carry the product. Anyone driving behind it would need to travel to another town to actually purchase the product. What the hell is the use of advertising it if you can’t even buy it at any of the government-controlled stores near the bus route? It’s certainly a lot more waste for Chambord than the two winery ads.

We need state liquor/wine privatization now. I realize that these products aren’t likely to appear on the shelves of any stores that will open under a private system near me. However, with market forces, I can reward those private sellers who do carry an interesting variety of wines & liquors. I realize that technically I could special order more products through my local store, but since most of the state employees around here make it clear that you are unwelcome as a customer in their store, it’s not something I’m likely to try anytime soon. If a private store was run by a reasonably friendly staff, then I’d likely approach them with requests to try new products I see advertised. Then, those dollars wouldn’t be wasted.

In the meantime, the PLCB staffers have declared war on us. I look forward to even worse service and more obnoxious employees getting in the way of my attempts to buy wine & liquor. Fortunately, the GOP has indicated they will try to have a privatization bill passed in the House by Memorial Day. That will be something worth raising a glass to on the holiday weekend!

Drink Up

While gun owners may be wondering if there will be cause to drink tonight with any calls for gun control in the State of the Union, I figured this would be the opportune time to link the State of the Union Drinking Game. Â They say that if all goes well, you’ll be unconscious before the Republican response.